Coming Home
by snapesgirl21
Summary: Nearly four years after breaking up, Ranger receives a phone call about Stephanie Plum and the life she has been living without him. In progress.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's note: I don't necessarily have a point in the canon after which this story occurs except for it is definitely post-Twelve Sharp. There may or may not be references to books after that, but honestly I don't think it matters. The story is from Ranger's POV, but I'll probably give Stephanie a couple of chapters from her own perspective later on.**_

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 _It was a million tiny things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together…and I knew it. I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home…only to no home I'd ever known…I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car and I knew. It was like…magic._

 _~Tom Hanks as Sam Baldwin, Sleepless in Seattle_

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I grew up in a three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom house in the West Ward of Newark until I was fourteen and hadn't lived in it a day since. The neighborhood consisted of mostly Latino and Caribbean families who worked hard in the service industries or owned small businesses. The neighborhood was modest, holding its own against the gang-controlled streets a few blocks over. My parents had always kept the house looking neat, though it had been far too small for our family of eight. My father had managed to convert the attic into something resembling livable space where my brother and I had slept, though it had been chronically uncomfortable. Too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, and once you were more than five feet tall, too short to walk through without needing to hunch over. Memories of my childhood in that house had consisted of my exhausted parents passing each other in the kitchen as my mother came back from her nightshift as a nurse at the nearby hospital and my father left for his long day of building houses in nicer neighborhoods than ours, of my four sisters either yelling at me to go away or using me as a model for their latest make-up and hair styles, and of my brother referring to me as _Carla_ and introducing me to pictures of naked women long before I had any sexual interest _._ My childhood hadn't been bad. By standards for the neighborhood it had been fairly normal, even what most would have deemed good. As an adult I can see that I had a decent childhood, definitely one free from the horrors of abuse and poverty, but I had hated my life as a kid. I had felt perpetually ignored, which is an occupational hazard of being the youngest of six children and an introvert. With the exception of my sister Aurelia, everyone else was outgoing and busy with friends. Aurelia hadn't cared if anyone noticed her. She was content with her books and the piano. She still didn't care to be noticed. I no longer cared to be noticed either, but as a boy and teenager it had been all I wanted.

As I stood in the kitchen next to my older brother, I wished I still had the ability to be as invisible as I had when I was little. Tradition in my parents' household dictated that the women prepared the meals and the men cleaned up afterwards. Sometimes I suspected they made enormous messes while cooking just to fuck with us. We had been washing dishes and cleaning up for nearly two hours and it felt like no end was in sight. My brother had indulged in too much whiskey during the meal and was singing Christmas songs at the top of his lungs, which meant I was at risk for a burst eardrum. Laughter from the women in my family rang out from the living room, though not enough to drown out Emilio's second round of _Feliz Navidad_. My father had managed to disappear at some point and my three teenage nephews were glued to their cell phones. Andres, my sister Celia's husband, was helping, though Sofia's husband Tony, who is only a few years younger than my parents, was sitting at the table, asleep with his chin propped up on one hand. We were going to be here until Christmas, and then it would start all over again.

"Hey," I said, managing to elicit a millisecond of eye contact from one of the boys. "Start drying and putting the dishes away or your phones are going in the water. But only after I've shown your mothers the pictures you have on there."

I suspected it was threat of showing their mothers the pictures of their dicks that they'd sent to girls more than the threat of water-logged phones that spurred them into action, but they put their phones in pockets and started drying dishes without complaint. I intimidated them, which I used only when needed. I wasn't the type of uncle who was going to take them to strip clubs or show them how to roll a joint – Emilio was that uncle –but I hoped they felt like they could call on me if they were in trouble. I'd rather drive an hour to pick their drunk asses up from some party and spend half the night sobering them up than serve as a pall bearer at their funeral.

My sister Silvia came into the kitchen to see what we were doing, making critical comments over everything from the temperature of the water used to rinse the dishes to the way Andres wiped down counters. Silvia is eighteen months older than me and a generally miserable person. She loved little more than to inflict some of her misery onto the rest of us. She had gotten pregnant at fifteen, refused to name a father, and ran away from home two weeks after she gave birth with her newborn in tow. She made no attempts at contact for nearly six years, until she showed up on my sister Celia's doorstep a week after her twenty-first birthday with my nephew, who was almost six, and heavily pregnant with her second child, which had been conceived while she had worked evenings as an exotic dancer and picked up extra cash by entertaining more attentive patrons in the backseat of her car. She had lived with Celia, Andres, and the two children they had at the time for nearly a year until she found a job as a janitor, cleaning law offices in the evenings. She had that job for a little over a year until a senior partner at the law firm had stopped by late one evening to get some paperwork to find her being bent over a desk by a married junior partner. She was already three months' pregnant with the lawyer's baby when she was fired, and was able to collect a hefty sum of child support after a paternity test proved he was the father. She moved to Philadelphia not long after her second son was born to work at a youth shelter where she had stayed after running away from our parents' house. She was now the director of that shelter, had gone on to have what had seemed like a decent relationship with a man named Kyle for several years and a second daughter, only to have him die from cancer five years ago when their daughter was only two. While she was generally given a wide-berth by most of the family and her attitude was tolerated with silence and discreet eye rolls, I had gotten along with her well enough until Kyle died. After that it seemed she didn't want to try to get along with anyone, including her children. Her oldest son Jamil had joined the Army as soon as he turned eighteen. He was twenty-two now and stationed in South Korea. Her sixteen-year-old daughter Mara was five months' pregnant and living with her boyfriend's family after Silvia had called her a slut and Mara had told her mother she didn't have any right to be calling anyone a slut considering there was no idea who Jamil's or Mara's respective fathers might be. Her fourteen-year-old son Luis had gone to live with his father and new stepmother in Elizabeth because of bullying back in Philadelphia. Only seven-year-old Ana Maria was left at home with her mother, and I pitied the girl because I suspected Silvia spent most of her evenings drunk on cheap wine. I didn't know much about girls that age, but I suspected most of them weren't as capable of taking care of themselves as she was.

"Carlos, your phone keeps ringing," my mother said, my iPhone in her hand as she stood in the kitchen doorway. "It's the same number that keeps calling and they've left a couple of voicemails and text messages."

I dried my hands and took the phone from my mother. There were five missed calls, two voicemails, and three text messages from a number with a 260 area code. I had to type in my security code since my fingerprints were distorted from being in the water. I opened the text messages first.

 _1:32PM_ **KJ:** _ **This is Katie Johnson. I'm friends with Stephanie Plum. Please call me back immediately.**_

 _2:04 PM_ **KJ:** _ **I know you haven't heard from her in a long time, but please call me. She told me to call you if there was ever an emergency.**_

 _2:38 PM_ **KJ:** _ **I'm trying to reach Carlos Manoso. If this is the wrong number, please let me know.**_

Seeing Stephanie's name on my phone had felt like a punch to the gut. I hadn't heard anything from or about her since she had left my apartment– and Trenton – nearly four years earlier. Her mother used to call me periodically to see if I had heard from her, but I hadn't had a call from Helen Plum in over two years. The last time she spoke to me she had asked why I hadn't tried looking for Stephanie. She hadn't appreciated my response that Stephanie had asked me to stay out of her life and that I had decided it was better for all involved that I keep my distance.

I opened the phone app and selected the number that had been used to call me. The location information said the phone number was from Fort Wayne, Indiana. The person on the other end answered on the first ring.

"This is Carlos Manoso," I said when a woman's voice answered, stepping out of the kitchen and into my parents' tiny laundry room. "Is this Katie Johnson?"

"Yes, oh thank God you called back. I thought I had the wrong number," she replied, relief evident in her voice along with a slight upper Midwest accent. "Stephanie has been in an accident. A bad one. She was brought into the ER with head trauma and internal injuries. She's in surgery right now. I used to be a nurse here at the hospital and they know we're friends so they called me right away."

Every time Stephanie had been in danger when she had been in bond enforcement my pulse had picked up, my brain fired on all cylinders, and I was ready to leap into action to save her. It was happening again, like muscle memory. Even after all this time. Even after everything that had gone down.

"Why did she want you to call me?" I asked after taking a second to process my feelings. "As you seem to know, I haven't seen or heard from her in almost four years."

The woman let out a heavy sigh that bordered on disgust. "I'm sorry you have to find out from me when she is the one who should be telling you this, but– the thing is– you're the father of her little girl, Stella," she finished quickly, stumbling over her words slightly as she spoke. "Stella was in the car with her."

I felt my body go numb. I tried to remember the last time I had felt that way, but couldn't think of it. Katie kept talking in my ear, but I couldn't focus enough to hear what she was saying. I had a child with Stephanie. A daughter. Stephanie had been pregnant with my child as she told me she hated me and to stay away from her that last day in my apartment.

"Carlos? Are you there?" Katie said, the sound of my name bringing me back to the moment.

"I'm here. Can you repeat what you were saying?" I said, running a hand through my hair and noticing for the first time that my mother had been standing nearby and was watching with concern written all over her face.

"Stella has a broken arm and a mild concussion along with some bumps and bruises, but is otherwise fine. Obviously scared and keeps asking where Stephanie is. The hospital is going to release her to me because I'm a nurse practitioner and can keep an eye on her medically and also because Stephanie has me listed as a power-of-attorney for both herself and Stella. You are also listed as a power-of-attorney for Stella, so there shouldn't be a problem with you being here making decisions for her until you can get the legal stuff worked out," Katie said. I could hear the sound of an intercom in the background and voices. It sounded like she was walking through halls. "I'm leaving work early so I can take care of Stella. I'm going to take her up to the surgical waiting room until I find out more about Stephanie. Once she is out of surgery and as long as–," Katie's voice broke slightly for the first time. "–as long as we aren't going to have to say goodbye, I'll take Stella back to her house."

"Where are you?" I asked after taking a moment to compose myself. "I'll see if I can fly out. If I can't get anything faster, then I'll drive." The thought of Stephanie dying without anyone except her friend and her – _our_ – daughter there made me physically sick. Not to mention the idea of me not being there with Stella if Stephanie didn't make it.

"We're at Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Stephanie works here, and we live in the same neighborhood. It's about a ten-minute drive from the hospital. We aren't far from the airport. A friend of mine is going over to Stephanie's to get Stella some toys and clothes. The doctors said she'll likely be in surgery for several hours." I heard different noise in the background now, which included a child's voice. A little girl's voice.

"Stella, my friend Sara went to your house to get you some clean clothes and a few toys because we have to wait here at the hospital for a while," Katie said, her voice sounding distant as though she had moved the phone away from her mouth. "But I'm on the phone with your daddy and he's going to come out as soon as he can."

"My daddy?" The sound of her voice sent a chill through me. It was sweet and innocent, scared and slightly mystified at the same time. Goddamn Stephanie. She had better survive, if for nothing more than to explain what the hell she had been thinking.

"Yep. He's in New Jersey, but he's going to get out here as fast as he can to be with you and Mommy," Katie replied. Her voice got closer to the phone again. "I can text you all of the information you need. I have a few things to get done with Stella so we can get out of the ER. Sara should be back any minute."

"Thank you," I replied. "Keep me updated on Stephanie's condition. Once I know my travel plans, I'll let you know when I should be there. And I'll contact her parents."

I disconnected from Katie and immediately called Tank, holding up a finger as my mother came up to me. "What's happened, Carlos?" she asked.

"I need the fastest way out to Fort Wayne, Indiana," I told Tank as soon as he answered. "If the fastest way there is to drive, that's fine. I just need the information as soon as possible. Plan for a couple of additional passengers on flights just in case. I don't care if it's private or commercial. Tell Ella to pack a bag for me for the next week. Mostly casual, but include a suit as well. Also my computer and iPad. I'm going to need to be offline at least for the next few days, but it could be longer. Route all calls through you. I'll hopefully know more information tonight or tomorrow."

"What the hell's going on in Indiana?" Tank asked.

"I'll explain later," I said. "I need to call Stephanie's parents and I need to talk to my own family. Let me know what you find."

"Stephanie? Seriously? She's in Indiana?"

"I'll give you the details later," I said and disconnected. I turned to my mother, who looked as though she might punch me if I didn't tell her something. "That person calling me was a friend of Stephanie's. She has been living in Indiana and she was in a car accident earlier. It's serious. Head trauma and internal injuries. She is expected to be in surgery for the next several hours."

My mother, a nurse for forty years, immediately went into her professional mode. It helped keep emotion at bay. "That's terrible. I hope she pulls through. But I don't understand why _you_ have to be out there. She left you, and you haven't had any contact with her since. Why are you rushing out there?"

"Because her friend also told me that I have a daughter with her. Stephanie had given her my contact information in case of an emergency," I replied, the words surprising me just as much as they had when Katie had said them.

My mother's professional demeanor disappeared and she steadied herself against the doorway. "Stephanie was pregnant when she left?" she said in a whisper, as shocked as myself.

"Apparently. She was also in the car, but made it out with a broken arm, a mild concussion, and some bumps and bruises. The friend is a nurse practitioner, so the hospital is releasing Stella to her for observation. Stephanie had a power-of-attorney document in place that gives her friend and myself the ability to take care of and make decisions for Stella if she couldn't." I blew out the breath that I hadn't realized I was holding, and my mother and I stood in silence for a few moments.

"I need to call the Plums," I said after a minute. "Can you update everyone? I'm hoping to hear about my travel plans shortly."

My mother disappeared and I left the laundry room and opted to call the Plums from the back porch. I was only in a long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans, but the cold air was refreshing. It helped clear my head as I searched for the Plums' home number in my contacts list. Even though she had left, and I knew for a fact that her number was no longer in service, I still had Stephanie's information in my phone, where it fell alphabetically just after her parents. I hit the number and was surprised when an automated message told me the number was no longer in service. Likely they had gotten rid of the landline and were strictly using cell phones these days. My own parents, who three years ago didn't know the difference between a smart phone and flip phone, now only used iPhones. I didn't have mobile numbers for either Plum, so I called Tank and added that particular task to his list.

"So far we've struck out on flights," Tank replied after I relayed my request. "Nothing commercial is available until tomorrow around ten and nothing private out of the area until tomorrow afternoon. It's about a ten-hour drive from here to Fort Wayne, so even if you left in a couple of hours, you could be there early in the morning. But Matt has a couple of private companies out of New York he's going to look into. If they don't produce, then you'll be driving."

"That's fine. Let me know about the Plums," I said. I hesitated slightly, but decided since I couldn't call the Plums until he found the numbers I could update him. "Stephanie was in an accident and hurt pretty badly. And I have a daughter with her."

I had been able to hear Tank's fingers moving across his keyboard, but they stopped abruptly. "Are you serious? You two have a kid?

"Yeah. I can't believe she kept it from me," I said, pacing back and forth on the old wooden porch.

Tank was silent, but I heard his fingers return to the keyboard. "She'd better fucking survive to explain herself."

My feelings exactly.

"Whoa," Tank said after a minute.

"What?"

"Apparently Frank and Helen Plum got divorced two years ago. I've got him living in Florida with some chick half his age and Helen is living with a man named Paul Giancarlo in the Burg."

"I wasn't expecting that. Did you get a number for either of them?"

Tank said he'd text me mobile numbers for Helen and Frank and disconnected. The numbers came through a few seconds later. I decided to call Helen first. I didn't want to talk to her; I'd much rather talk to Frank, but when it came to the health and well-being of their youngest daughter, my instinct was to defer to her mother. The phone went straight to voicemail. I left a message asking Helen to call me immediately, that it was an emergency regarding Stephanie, and disconnected. I tried Frank, but it also went straight to voicemail. I left him the same message. I opted to stay outside to wait on return calls. I wasn't ready to face my entire family and the questions they were going to have.

My mother came outside after a few minutes and wrapped her arms around her body. "Did you talk to Stephanie's parents?"

I shook my head. "I just found out that her parents divorced two years ago. Her father is in Florida and her mother is still in Trenton. I've left voicemails for both of them. If I don't hear back soon, I'll try her sister."

"And your travel plans?"

"Not sure yet. I may have to drive. The holiday is making it hard to get even a private flight out."

I could feel my mother scrutinizing me even though I had my back to her. "I'm coming with you," she said after a minute.

"You don't need to do that," I replied. "I'll be fine. Besides, you have to work."

"The office is closed tomorrow. I'll text the office manager and tell her I'm going to be out of town for a family emergency for a few days. She'll call in one of our subs. One of the perks of working in an office instead of a hospital," she replied. My mother had worked as a nurse on the labor and delivery unit of the local hospital for twenty-eight years. She had loved her job until the day twelve years ago when a woman had come to the hospital to give birth, and her boyfriend had subsequently strangled the one-hour old child because he had realized he wasn't the father. My mother had run into the room after hearing the mother's scream to find the man dangling the baby in the air, one large hand wrapped around its neck. She had managed to get the baby away from the man and she and the doctor tried to save it, but the boyfriend had nearly decapitated it. My mother quit her job that day and spent the next month locked in the house. Her priest eventually convinced her to go to therapy, and she went on to take a job at a pediatrician's office a year later. She was still there and loved it.

There was no point in trying to shake her off, and although I didn't want to admit it to myself, I was glad she wanted to come along. I suspected I was going to need her help. I wasn't a complete idiot when it came to children, but I also had no experience trying to take care of one for more than a few hours on my own. I knew I could attend to Stella's physical needs, but felt less confident in my abilities to provide for her emotional needs.

"You should start packing," I said. "Once I find out how we are getting there I'll either pick up my bags on the way or will have them brought to me. I'm hoping we'll be able to leave by five at the latest. Preferably sooner."

My phone rang seconds after my mother closed the door behind her.

"You'll have to drive," Tank told me. "Ella has your bags packed. Do you want me to send Miguel up with them or are you going to pick them up on your way?"

I checked my watch. It was three-thirty. Had it really been less than hour since I had spoken to Katie? I felt like days.

"Send Miguel. My mother is coming with me so it'll give her time to pack. We can leave as soon as he gets here. Get me Valerie Kloughn's number. I haven't been able to get ahold of their parents. I'd rather not leave town without someone in Stephanie's family knowing what has happened."

Tank said he'd text me the number and we disconnected. I called Valerie as soon as the number came through and was relieved when she answered. It still felt unreal as I relayed the information about Stephanie and Stella for the third time. Valerie was shocked and emotional, rambling on about how she and Stephanie had never been very close and even though they hadn't spoken in five years it would kill her if Stephanie didn't make it. Valerie and Albert had taken the children to California so that the older two girls could spend the holiday with their father, who had recently made more of an effort to be involved in their lives. She told me that Helen and her boyfriend had gone to Jamaica for the week and that Frank generally forgot to charge his phone, but that she would call the resort and Frank's girlfriend Cynthia to get ahold of her respective parents. Once the call was over, I headed back into the house. The kitchen was finally clean and everyone was congregated in the living and dining rooms.

"What the hell is going on?" Celia asked, stepping in my path so quickly that I nearly knocked her over. "Mom said you and Stephanie have a little girl together and you're just now finding out because she's badly hurt?"

"That sums it up," I said, attempting to step around her, but she blocked me.

"Did you ever suspect that she was pregnant when she left?"

"Do you think for one second that I wouldn't have found out for sure if I'd had any suspicions?" I asked coldly, daring her to make one comment about the situation with Julie. My family hadn't exactly been supportive of the decisions I had made regarding her. They had gotten used to it all in the thirteen years since Ron had adopted Julie, but every now and then someone would make a comment about it.

Celia eyed me for a moment, but said nothing. She sensed that I wasn't in the mood to be messed with. She got out of my way and I made it into a less crowded part of the room and plugged the address for the hospital into my GPS. Two different routes were offered, though both took me through central Pennsylvania and into northern Ohio before reaching Indiana. The city wasn't far over the state line. Katie had also sent me Stephanie's home address. I mapped it out in relation to the hospital and used Google Earth to look at the house. It was a ranch-style home with gray siding and black shutters, a double-width driveway, and a single car garage. The photograph had been taken in the spring or summer, as it was bright and colorful flowers bloomed in neat landscaping out front. I used the app to look around the neighborhood and found similar houses surrounding Stephanie's. It was a quiet, middle-class neighborhood. Trucks, minivans, and sedans were parked in driveways. I saw a few swing sets in backyards as I scanned the street. It was a neighborhood of families and probably a few middle-aged or elderly couples. Nothing flashy, but people were getting by well enough. I sent Tank a text message to run a full background check on Stephanie since she left Trenton and to email it to me when he was finished.

On a clear day, with light traffic, and if you adhere to the speed limits, it is possible to get from the Rangeman office to my parents' house in about an hour and ten minutes. Three years ago when my mother called me at two in the morning to say my father had just had a massive heart attack and was headed into emergency surgery, I managed to get from my office to the hospital that was three blocks from their house in forty-five minutes. Today, in the middle of the afternoon on Thanksgiving day after a light snowfall, Miguel was knocking on my parents' back door forty minutes after I told Tank to send him up to Newark with my luggage.

"Did you sprout wings and fly here?" I asked as I followed him out the Rangeman vehicle parked behind my Cayenne.

"No, but I did have to shake a cop on the Turnpike," he said. "Hopefully he didn't close enough to check my plates."

I transferred my suitcase, a garment bag containing a suit, and computer bag into the Cayenne, and advised Miguel to take an alternate route home since the police would likely be looking for him on the Turnpike.

My father was carrying my mother's suitcase down the steps as I headed towards the house. My mother was clad in a winter coat and held my own out to me.

"I figured you would want to get going," she said as I pulled on the wool coat. I nodded and headed to the car while she kissed my father goodbye. The time on my phone said four-fifteen as I pulled it out to send Katie a text message.

 _4:15 PM_ **CM:** _Getting ready to leave. Driving because there were no flights available. Hoping to be in Fort Wayne by 3 AM. My mother is coming with me._

 _4:16 PM_ **KJ:** _Okay. Still no word on Steph. Stella and I are in the surgical waiting room. Plan on going to Steph's unless you hear otherwise. Were you able to get ahold of her parents?_

 _4:17 PM_ **CM:** _Had to leave voicemails for both. Talked to her sister, who will keep trying their parents. They're divorced now. Mother is in Jamaica on vacation, father is living in Florida._

 _4:18 PM_ **KJ:** _Okay. I'll call you once I get an update._

My mother finally climbed into the passenger seat and we were pulling out of her driveway by the time the clock on the dash said four-nineteen. The GPS estimated that our drive time would be nine hours and fifty-three minutes, but there were numerous construction zones along the way that would slow things down with restricted lanes and lowered speed limits. My mother was silent and distracted, looking out the window as we drove west on the interstate. Her perfume, the same one she had been wearing since I was little, quickly enveloped the interior of the car.

"Why do you think she kept this from you?" she asked quietly as we crossed the state line into Pennsylvania an hour later.

I didn't answer right away. My parents had met Stephanie while we were together, and she had come to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner with me that year. Everyone had loved her, with the obvious exception of Celia, who hated anyone being happy. They had been surprised and expressed their disappointed when I'd told them that she had left. But I had never gone into great detail about our relationship. My mother didn't know how complicated things had been between Stephanie and me in the years leading up to the ten glorious months when we had been a couple.

"One of the reasons it took so long for us to be together was because I had told her more than once that marriage and children weren't in the plans for me," I answered. "She left me because I told her that I wasn't sure if I'd ever want to get married, but I still wanted to spend the rest of my life with her."

"Why didn't you want to get married?" my mother asked, seeming surprised by my answer. "You were very obviously in love with her. And happy. I don't think I've ever seen you so happy as you were when you were with her."

I took a minute to formulate my response. It was a question I had asked myself plenty of times over the past few years. Because I had been happy, happier than I had ever been at any point in my life before or since.

"I was afraid of disappointing her. Being her husband came with different expectations than just being her boyfriend. I was afraid of fucking up as a husband and losing her."

"So you fucked up as a boyfriend and lost her anyway," my mother responded, surprising me with her casual use of the word _fuck._ Just when you thought you knew someone.

"Pretty much."

"What would you have done if she had told you she was pregnant?"

"I would have been there for her and the baby," I said immediately. "I would have done whatever she wanted."

"Do you think that's why she wanted to get married?"

"Maybe. But my gut says she would have told me she was pregnant if that were the case. She would have been freaked out. Having kids wasn't high on her priorities list. She wasn't entirely sure if she ever wanted to have kids. And I don't remember her seeming any different. Nothing that would have made me suspect she might be pregnant." I did remember her being sick one night a couple of days before she left, but she had suspected the sandwich she had gotten at a Stark Street deli earlier that day might have been bad and there had been no reason to question it. "I lean more towards her finding out after she left."

"What are you going to do about Stella?" my mother asked.

"Establish myself as her father first, then take care of her until we know what is going to happen with Stephanie," I replied.

"And if Stephanie makes a complete recovery? Then what?"

"Are you asking if I'm going to step back out of her life like I did with Julie? Because the answer is no," I responded. "Even if Stephanie makes a full recovery and refuses to come back to New Jersey, I'm going to be a part of her life. I'm going to be a father, even if I have to do it from six-hundred miles away."

Now if I could just figure out how to be a father.

"I'm glad you're going to be responsible about it," she stated, and the tone in her voice got under my skin the same way it had when I'd been thirteen years old. "A child needs a father."

"I was responsible when it came to Julie," I replied shortly. "I married her mother so she wouldn't be born out of wedlock. I let another man adopt her so he could be the father to her that I wasn't capable of being at that time, and because Rachel preferred I not be a big part of her life. I still pay child support even though I'm not longer legally required to do so, and I visit as often as they ask. So stop acting like I haven't been responsible."

My mother didn't say anything else, even though I could tell she wanted to, and I prepared myself for a long, silent ride to Indiana.


	2. Chapter 2

**_A/N: If you got two alerts about this chapter, it's because I deleted and reposted after some people said they couldn't see it. It might just be a glitch on the website's end._**

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 _But baby I've been here before_

 _I've seen this room and I've walked this floor_

 _You know, I used to live alone before I knew you._

 _~Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah_

* * *

When we crossed the state line into Ohio around eleven that night, my mother insisted we stop for a meal. I pulled into the parking lot of the only restaurant open, an IHOP, which was surprisingly full for Thanksgiving night.

"Black Friday shoppers," my mother said, seeming to read my mind as we were seated at a table near the back of the restaurant. "These stores get their sales going by dinner on Thanksgiving night. It's ridiculous."

I perused the menu, looking for something that came in under a thousand calories. I wasn't really hungry, but my stomach had been less knotted after speaking to Katie. She had called around nine-thirty as we had traveled through central Pennsylvania to report that Stephanie had come through surgery. Her head trauma, while still serious, hadn't been quite as bad as initially feared. She had a broken left hip, several broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, and a lacerated liver. The surgeons reported no complications during surgery, but that she was being placed into a medically-induced coma to allow her brain and body to rest. The neurosurgeon hoped the coma would only be necessary for a couple of days. They couldn't provide any sort of recovery information at the time because there would need to be further brain scans once swelling had gone down to determine if there would be any lingering brain damage. The general surgeon stated that the liver repair had gone well and the liver's natural regenerative properties would take care of the rest over the next few weeks and months. Her spleen had been removed, which she could live without, but it put her at increased risk of infection. Her broken ribs had been treated with something called plating, which the surgeon reported would mean much less time on a ventilator and lowered risk of pneumonia. Katie had spent enough time around doctors to know when they were being cautiously optimistic and when they were just trying to avoid panicked loved ones, and her assessment had been that they were cautiously optimistic about Stephanie's recovery. She had taken Stella home after speaking with the surgeons and had been trying to get her settled for bed. Knowing that imminent danger was past had given me some relief, though I knew there was still chance for complications. And there was plenty of uncertainty as to her mental status.

"I'm sorry about earlier," my mother said after the server took our orders. "I know you did what you felt was best for Julie, and that I have no right to question it. I just hate that we don't get to be a bigger part of her life."

I shrugged. "I know. I wish things could have been different, but nothing good would have come of me trying to be a father to her at that point in my life. I was young and in the Army, and Rachel resented me. The reality is that Ron was the one who insisted I remain in Julie's life to some extent. I think Rachel would have been happy to never see me again."

"That surprises me. You two seem to get along so well," my mother said as the server poured us both coffee and brought waters.

"We do now. But back then she barely tolerated me. I ruined her plans of going off to college and made her a mother instead. I was older, more experienced, and knew better."

A group of women behind us seemed to be drawing up battle plans for the nearby mall. Each had been given a list of items to purchase at certain stores because of limited quantities. I was pretty sure I'd put less thought and planning into missions in enemy territory.

"It's different with Stephanie and Stella," I continued after listening to the women for another minute. "I'm older, in a much less dangerous position in my life, and Stephanie wasn't a one-night stand. We've been in a relationship. I've loved her for years. We've been through a lot." I shook my head and ran fingers through my hair. "I should have married her. I was an idiot for not assuming that she would eventually want that, especially when she broke off an engagement two weeks before the wedding to be with me. I _wanted_ to marry her. I just didn't think I had what it takes. I've seen you and Dad making things work through forty-three years and six kids, and I have no clue how you managed it."

"It hasn't been easy," she replied. "There were plenty of years where we weren't exactly happy. When you kids were little and we both worked so much that we almost never saw each other, it was more like living with a roommate. We blamed each other when Silvia got pregnant and ran away, and then you stole a car and ended up in juvenile detention. We almost got divorced. But we realized that we had been in survival mode and had done the best we could. The only thing we could do moving forward was actually living rather than just surviving."

Stephanie had accused me once of simply surviving and not really living. It had been part of the reason I had caved to the desire to have a relationship with her. I wanted to live something resembling a normal life. I didn't like to admit it, but as confident as I was in just about every other area of life, the one area of insecurity that still plagued me from childhood was the belief that I wasn't good enough for the people I loved. I had overcompensated in my professional life to make up for it and had distanced myself from people in my personal life in an attempt to not feel connected enough to care. But the truth of the matter was that I had never felt good enough for my parents or Julie. Or for Stephanie. And now I was worried about not being good enough for Stella.

"Do you think there's a chance you two might get back together?" my mother asked once we were back in the car after a hasty meal.

"I haven't seen her in nearly four years, and she kept the fact that I had a child from me until now. I'm not sure how I'm feeling right now. Besides, we don't even know what might happen." I felt the contents of my stomach churn. "She may have brain damage. If so, who knows what kind of life she may have."

I suppressed the urge to vomit as I pulled onto I-80 West. My mother laid a hand on my arm.

"You can't think like that, Carlos," she said quietly. "The doctors said things weren't as bad as they initially thought. That's good. She's going to have a long recovery no matter what, but it doesn't sound as though hope is lost."

"She wouldn't want a life that left her dependent on other people," I said after a few minutes. "And I'm going to be even more pissed off than I am now if she can't explain to me why she did this."

My mother didn't say anything else and fell asleep a few minutes later. I was grateful for it, because I wanted time to think without her constant scrutinizing. I was pissed off and terrified. I didn't want to see a Stephanie who was unable to take care of herself. But if that were to be the case, I'd take care of her. I'd bring her and Stella back to Trenton and when I wasn't with them, I'd see to it that someone reliable was. Because no matter how angry I was with her now and how much she had hurt me when she left, she was the mother of my child and I still loved her. Katie hadn't mentioned any boyfriends, but it would be arrogant to assume she wasn't dating anyone. Katie had been instructed to call me specifically because of Stella, not necessarily because of Stephanie. That had been one of the reasons I hadn't looked for her. It had been bad enough to see her with Morelli, but I hadn't actually allowed myself to be in a real relationship with her before that. It would have killed me to find her in love and happy with someone else after what we'd had together. After the way she had made me feel.

I sent Katie a text message once the GPS said we were thirty minutes away. We had crossed the state line into Indiana and had to head south in the city towards Stephanie's. Katie replied within minutes to say she would watch for us. My mother woke up as we pulled into the neighborhood. Stephanie's house was on a dead-end street near the back of the addition. I had recalled seeing a park at the end of her road when I'd checked it out on Google Maps and could see glimpses of playground equipment as my headlights shined down the road. I pulled into the driveway and could see a light on behind closed curtains in the large front window. I had just closed my car door when the front door opened. My mother and I retrieved our luggage from the cargo area and headed to the door.

Katie greeted us and held the door as we came through. She was around my age with blonde hair and blue eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses, wearing a cream sweater and black sweat pants. She was around Stephanie's height, but with a leaner frame. She had probably been a dancer growing up. She was attractive in the same sort of way Stephanie was attractive. Men didn't forget how to talk when she walked into a room, but they would appreciate her as she walked by.

"It's nice to finally meet you," she told me as she closed the front door behind us. "Though I wish it were happening under better circumstances."

A quick glance around the room showed me that a woman and a little girl lived here. There was a brown, overstuffed sofa, a matching loveseat, and a recliner situated around the rectangular living room with dark wooden tables next to each. Hardwood flooring was covered in the center of the room by a large area rug that coordinated with the muted wall colors. A flat-screen television sat on an entertainment center at one end of the room. The walls contained some focal pieces, a large clock, and pictures. A child's table was situated in a corner with two small chairs and boxes of crayons and stacks of coloring books. I could see a dining room and kitchen through a large opening opposite the front door. A hallway leading to the other end of the house extended from the left side of the living room.

A large frame with multiple pictures divided into sections hung over the sofa. I spotted a picture of myself and Stephanie from when we had been in Hawaii together several years ago, pictures of her mother, father, and grandmother, one of Valerie and her kids, and in the middle of the frame was a picture of Stephanie with a little girl that was unmistakably our child. The child Stephanie held had her blue eyes and curly hair in a shade darker than her mother's, but my nose and smile. Her skin tone was somewhere on the spectrum between the two of us. I was probably biased, but she was the most beautiful child I had even seen. I tore my eyes from Stella to look at Stephanie, who was beaming and holding Stella close. She looked the same as she had when she'd left Trenton with the exception of a slightly fuller face and small lines that had started to appear at the corners of her mouth. Neither change detracted from her looks, but in my opinion made her more beautiful.

"I've been trying to keep myself occupied, so I made a bunch of lists for you," Katie said as we all took seats in the living room. I could see a notebook and pen sitting on an end table next to the sofa and several pages that had already been torn out. "Things like Stella's routine, her likes and dislikes, passwords and codes for stuff around the house, important numbers, yada, yada, yada." She picked up a glass of red wine and finished the last dregs. "It has been a hell of a day."

"What exactly happened?" I asked.

"We were going to have Thanksgiving dinner together here around six," Katie began. "I'm a pediatric nurse-practitioner and was on-call today for the whole practice. We have privileges at all three hospitals in the city, so I was going to be spending all day doing rounds. Stephanie was preparing most of the meal, but Stella's daycare had to suddenly shut down this week so she had been busy and had forgotten to pick up a few things. She had called to see if I had everything, but I knew I didn't. There is a convenience store near the hospital that is well-stocked and never closes, so she said she would run up there to grab what she could and then come back to get started on dinner." Katie pulled her legs onto the sofa and wrapped her arms around them. "Apparently there was a man who had been on his way to his daughter's house who had started feeling bad and had called her to say he was going to stop in at the emergency room to get checked out. The police think he had a massive heart attack and slumped at the wheel. He ran a red light and hit Stephanie's car so hard it flipped over. Thank God for car seats. It protected Stella from getting hurt even worse. And the impact was directly on Stephanie's door. They had to use the jaws of life to get her out. The man was dead on arrival." Katie and my mother both made the sign of the cross at mention of the man's death.

"How's Stella doing?" I asked, glancing down the dark hallway that I assumed lead to the bedrooms. I could see two doors on the right side of the hall that were open to rooms and a closed door on the left looked like it was probably a closet, but the hall made sharp left towards the front of the house and my view around the corner was obscured.

"She's okay. She was freaked out when they brought her into the emergency room, but she calmed down a little once I got there. She hates the brace on her arm, and she has to go to an orthopedic center tomorrow to have a cast put on. But she hasn't had any issues from the concussion. She keeps asking where Stephanie is and when she'll come home. I told her that her mom got hurt and the doctors are going to help her, but that we don't know when she'll come home. I don't specialize in head trauma, but I know enough that even if Stephanie is capable of making a full recovery, she is going to be in the hospital and then in-patient rehabilitation for months before she can come home. Then she's going to have months, if not years, of outpatient rehab." Katie shook her head like she couldn't believe it all. "I don't know what to expect."

A gray and white kitten startled my mother when it appeared at her feet meowing. She bent down to pick it up. "Hi, kitty," she said, stroking its head.

"That's Boston, Stella's new kitten," Katie said. "She got her for her birthday last month. He's named after the donut, not the city."

I stifled a laugh. "What day was she born?" I asked.

"October 12, 2015," Katie replied with a smile. "Stephanie's thirty-third birthday. She wasn't happy to be giving birth on her own birthday, but now she enjoys sharing the day with Stella."

I had spent the evening of Stephanie's thirty-third birthday drinking bourbon in my apartment and confessing to Tank just how miserable I was without her. And six-hundred miles away she had been bringing our child into the world.

I watched my mother pet the kitten for a few minutes while Katie refilled her wine and asked if either of us wanted a glass. My mother declined, but I accepted one. I was going to need some sleep soon anyway.

"How long have you known Stephanie?" I asked after taking a drink. It was a cheap red wine that was a little too sweet for my taste, but I didn't particularly care.

"Since she got here. She hadn't intended to stay in Fort Wayne, but she had been really sick and ended up in the ER at Lutheran because she was dehydrated. I was her nurse and when she learned she was pregnant, she fell apart. I was telling her that it would be okay and she'd figure it out. That's when she told me about you two breaking up the week before, about her ending her engagement to that Joe guy to be with you, and how she was trying to figure out where to go next because she hadn't spoken to her family in nearly a year since she ended her engagement. She had thought about heading to Chicago to see if she liked it, but had stopped here because she thought she had food poisoning. There was a huge snow storm coming in, so after she was released I invited her back to my house until everything cleared up enough for her to leave town. She was there a couple of days and we got to know each other better. I really liked her, and told her she should consider staying. There was a job opening at the hospital for a quality assurance specialist, and she had just been telling me about her time as a bounty hunter and all the trips to hospital she had taken. I figured if anyone knew what a hospital needed and could help manage disgruntled people, it would be her. She thought about it and decided to apply for the job. She said she would take it as a sign that she should stay if she got it. Otherwise, she was headed to Chicago." Katie took a long drink of wine before continuing. "She was freaked out about being pregnant. She'd considered going back to Trenton, but decided against it. She said you hadn't wanted to marry her and if you didn't want her, you really wouldn't want her and a baby. She considered an abortion for about thirty seconds, but even though she isn't really Catholic anymore she didn't feel like she could go through with it. She considered adoption for about a minute, but felt like she couldn't go through with that either, plus she figured if you found out that she had given a baby of yours up for adoption that you'd kill her."

"So she thought the best idea was to never tell me that I had a child?" I asked, my irritation coming out more obviously than I had intended.

Katie rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Ugh. That has been a rollercoaster of its own. When she was pregnant she assumed you'd find her and then she would have to tell you. When you didn't show up after a while, she decided it was because you didn't care. She told me that you have a daughter in Florida and that you aren't very involved in her life. Steph said she knew you'd pay child support and visit sometimes if she told you about the baby, the same way you did with your other daughter, but she didn't think that was any way for a child to grow up and figured things were better without you."

There was an extended silence after that while we all took that information in. Damn. I'd had no idea she felt that way about the situation with Julie. She had never indicated any sort of disapproval or approval. I had assumed she didn't care very much. I avoided looking in my mother's direction.

"But she almost called you the day Stella was born," Katie continued, in an obvious effort to eliminate the awkward silence. "She was talking about how much she looked like you and thought maybe it would be different because your life and your relationship with her was much different from when you had your other daughter. But she never did. After a while, I think she gave up hope that you'd ever show up. Every few months she would talk about calling you, but then make excuses about it. It was always obvious to me that the issue wasn't your involvement with Stella, but your involvement with Steph. She was still in love with you, and I think she was always afraid of what would happen if she had to be around you. Last year she finally seemed to accept that what I had been telling her was true. She said that she would call once she felt like she was over you. I thought it was bullshit, but it was her choice." Katie took another long drink from her glass.

"That seemed to make things worse," she continued. "She was constantly trying to figure out if she was over you yet. I had enough of it last month and told her that I didn't want to hear anything else about you again until she was telling me you were on the way here because what she was doing was selfish and just hurting Stella in the end. We didn't talk for a couple of weeks, but when I saw her again on Halloween, she told me that she had made the decision to call you after Christmas because I was right. It shouldn't matter if she was over you or not because Stella needed to know you. Stella had reached a point recently where she kept asking when you would be done working. That's what Stephanie has always told her– that you were busy working and that's why you weren't around. Steph wanted to get through the holidays because she didn't know how things might be once you knew about Stella, and she said you always work a lot during the holidays to give your employees with family time off. She told me that if I saw her backing down that I was free to tie her to a chair, dial your number, and force her to talk to you."

I wasn't sure how to feel about what Katie was telling me. While I was glad that Stephanie had intended to call me soon, I was somehow more furious than I had been. Maybe it was just the anxiety of her current condition, but I wanted to punch things. I wanted to go up to the hospital to shake her until she woke up, to yell at her for depriving me of a relationship with our daughter for the first three years of her life. For robbing me of the opportunity to be present at her birth and missing her first steps and words. I had missed all of those things with Julie because I was on the other side of the world when those things happened and by the time I was back in the same country, she was calling someone else Daddy. What also bothered me was how little faith Stephanie appeared to have in my feelings for her. Had she forgotten everything that had gone down in the time we had known each other? I had lost track of how many times I had risked my life for hers and how much money and man power had been put into keeping her safe. I had killed several people while attempting to find or protect her. I had lost several employees because they got tired of getting hurt around her.

My mother was wide awake after sleeping during the ride, so she stayed awake to go over the lists Katie made while I went down the hall to the second room on the right, which was Stephanie's bedroom. I could see a door around the bend in the hallway with a blue sign with cartoon characters on it and the name _Stella_ written in purple. The door was closed. A decent-sized bathroom was next to her bedroom at the front of the house. I used the bathroom and went into Stephanie's bedroom to sleep. She had a queen-sized bed, dresser, night stand, rocking chair, and smaller television on a table in the room. I changed out of the clothes I'd been wearing for almost twenty-four hours and into a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. I contemplated looking through Stephanie's night stand and dresser, but emotion, exhaustion, and the glass of cheap wine on an empty stomach pulled me towards her bed. I asleep in less than a minute.

I was dreaming about Stephanie. We were in my apartment at Rangeman, drinking that cheap wine Katie had served. I was teasing her about it. She had hit me in the chest, but the pressure of the hit had lingered. It didn't hurt, but felt like something pressing on me. I was about to ask Stephanie what she had done when I felt something tickle my nose. I opened my eyes to find small blue eyes an inch from my own.

"Hi Daddy," Stella said cheerfully. She leaned back and I realized the pressure on my chest had been from her sitting on me. She was dressed in purple and white pajamas with several little dogs on the front. It looked like some of the same dogs that had been on the sign on her door. She had a bruise on the left side of her forehead and on her right cheekbone. Her curly hair was a mess.

"Hey," I replied. I felt almost speechless, being face-to-face with her for the first time. Her resemblance to Stephanie made my throat tighten briefly. "How are you?"

"My arm got broke," she said, lifting her left arm to reveal a tiny air cast. It was covered with a sleeve that was likely there to prevent her from removing it. "The car went upside-down."

I put a finger on the cast. "I heard. Does it hurt?"

Stella's bottom lip stuck out ever so slightly and her blue eyes went wide as she nodded her head. I fought the urge to smile. She looked like she might be a champion pouter. She seemed tiny for three-years-old, but I didn't have a good frame of reference.

"Abuela made pancakes," she told me. "I like them." She climbed off of my chest to stand on the bed. "Dora says Abuela too."

"Who's Dora?"

"Dora on TV," Stella replied, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Oh yeah. A little girl who speaks Spanish and English. Has a pet monkey? My nieces and nephews had liked it.

"Where's Mommy?" Stella asked as I tried to remember stuff about Dora the Explorer. We'd been talking for less than a minute and the topics had varied from her broken arm to pancakes to Dora and now to Stephanie. She certainly kept you on your toes.

"Mommy's at the hospital,' I said. "She got hurt when the car went upside-down and the doctors are trying to make her better. But I'm going to be here with you until she can come home."

"You all done working?" she asked. It took me a minute to both decipher her speech and to remember that Katie had said this was the explanation Stephanie had given for my absence.

"Um, yeah. I'm all done working." I sat up on the edge of the bed and looked at the clock on my phone. It was eight-thirty. I had two missed calls, one from Valerie and one from Helen. Both had left voicemails. I had managed about three-and-a-half hours of sleep. It was enough, especially since I could tell Stella wasn't going to leave me alone. She started jumping up and down on the bed and talking about something I couldn't understand. I grabbed her and lifted her off the bed. "You have a broken arm and a concussion. Let's not jump on the bed."

She wrapped her arms and legs around me, indicating that I should carry her. We went into the kitchen, where my mother was cleaning up from breakfast.

"Sit down and I'll get you a plate," she said as I put Stella on the floor. I took a seat at the dining room table and Stella sat in a chair next to mine, which had a small seat in it to make her taller.

"I want a banana," Stella told my mother.

"You don't have any bananas," my mother replied as she put pancakes in the microwave to warm.

"But I want one," Stella whined.

"You'll have to choose something else until we can go to the grocery store," my mother replied patiently. I didn't remember her being that patient with me as a kid when I had whined like that. She would have told me that stop whining or I wouldn't get anything to eat.

Stella looked as though she was considering a tantrum, but decided against it. "Grapes." She watched on as my mother pulled a bag of red grapes from the refrigerator. "Where's Katie?"

"She went home for a while," my mother replied. "She was up all night taking care of you before Daddy and I got here, so she went home to get some sleep."

Stella jumped out of her seat and ran to the living room. She climbed onto the couch and pulled the curtains back. "I see her house."

"She lives three houses down on the opposite side of the road," my mother explained as she put pancakes and fruit in front of me. She knew better than to bother with syrup. "Stella's appointment with the orthopedic center is at one-thirty. She'll be here at twelve forty-five to pick her up. She wasn't sure if you'd want to go or if Stephanie's family might be here by then."

I nodded and checked the voicemails on my phone while I ate. Valerie reported that she had managed to get ahold of her parents and had given them my phone number. Her father was going to drive to Indiana from Florida because he hated flying, and her mother was working getting a flight out of Jamaica. Helen's voicemail said she and her boyfriend Paul had managed to get a flight into the Indianapolis airport that would arrive around noon. They would rent a car and drive to Fort Wayne. She said she had called the hospital for an update on Stephanie and had been told she was still critical, but stable. Helen's plane would already be in the air, so I didn't bother calling her back. I assumed she would call once they were on their way. Stella had come back to the table for her grapes and a glass of milk. The lists Katie had made were spread out on the table, so I picked them up and read them as I finished eating. Katie was Stella's primary medical practitioner, though a pediatrician was also listed. She was lactose intolerant, so she could only have lactose-free dairy. She hated peaches, small dogs, her food touching each other, and any toothpaste other than the specific My Little Pony child's toothpaste that tasted like berries. She loved Dora, Paw Patrol, big dogs, cats, coloring, Play-Doh, going to the park, the zoo, playing dress up, and listening to music.

While my mother helped Stella pick out clothes and get dressed for the day, I opened my laptop and read through the background check Tank had done on Stephanie since leaving Trenton. She had been employed at Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne since March 1, 2015. Her current salary was around $53,000 a year, and she had been earning a raise every year since she started. She had resided at her current address since July 2015. Katie's address was listed as her address prior to that. She rented from people named Dennis and Charlotte Johnson, which Tank had noted were Katie's parents. She had a little money saved, had a couple of credit cards with balances, and was three years into a five-year loan on the 2015 Honda Accord that had been totaled in the accident. Gap insurance was in place to take care of the loan now that the car was destroyed. Three years with the same car was probably a record for her. She hadn't been involved in the legal system, either criminally or civilly. She had an Indiana driver's license. She had voted in the last two elections. Her spending history showed she went to the local minor league hockey games in the winter and the minor league baseball games the rest of the year. She paid for Stella to go to daycare at a facility near the hospital, though Tank had made a note that the facility had recently been shut down due to financial difficulties. Medical records showed both Stephanie and Stella were healthy. Stephanie's pregnancy and delivery had been without complication. Stella had been born at 10:30 AM, had weighed only seven pounds and one ounce and had been nineteen inches long, despite being born three days past Stephanie's due date.

She had been affected with chronic ear infections as an infant and had been put on medication due to something called Eustachian tube malfunction, which had been successful to avoid surgical intervention. She was considered to be at the small end of the height-weight spectrum for her age, but it wasn't of concern.

Katie had located the password to Stephanie's computer, so I went through it to see what I could figure out about her life in the last three years that wouldn't show up on a background check. No signs of a boyfriend. Her browser history showed some visits to dating websites, but nothing in the past several months. No emails between her and other men in any sort of romantic sense. The iMessage app on her computer was linked to her phone. There were a few text messages with men, but everything seemed platonic or professional. The only text thread I found that showed she had been seeing anyone had been from a few months earlier. Someone named Tyler had been texting with her for a while. It was clear they had gone out quite a few times over the course of about three months, but one of Stephanie's last messages to him explained everything.

 _ **I'm sorry. You're a great guy, but I'm not over my ex and it isn't fair for me to try to force something to be there between us that isn't. You don't deserve that.**_

He had texted a few more times, asking her to not give up yet. She had apologized again, and eventually quit responding to him. He had given up after a couple of days and there hadn't been any further contact. If there had been other men, they hadn't had iPhones and therefore their messages weren't visible on the computer. But considering she was telling someone back in June that she wasn't over me, I doubted there had been anyone else.

A search of her bedroom showed me the life of a busy single mother. Her non-work clothes were practical and comfortable and her professional attire was attractive, but inexpensive. She wasn't neglecting herself, but was prioritizing her spending. Her night stand contained pens, notebooks, two flashlights, chap stick, batteries of varying size and brands, and a long black box that held a pink vibrator and her favorite lube. No condoms. She was taking care of herself. There had also been a picture of me in the drawer. She had taken it one night after a particularly satisfying round of sex. I was lying on my back, the sheet on the bed barely covering my hips. She'd said it was sexy, like something you'd see in a magazine. I had been laughing when she had taken the picture.

I heard my cell phone ringing in the other room as I replaced everything in the night stand. Stella had reached my phone first and swiped to answer before I could get there.

"Hello?" she said cheerfully. I grabbed the phone and checked the displayed. It was Helen Plum's cell phone.

"Carlos, this is Helen. Was that Stella?"

"Yeah. I assumed you're in Indianapolis?"

I could hear commotion in the background. "Yes, we landed about thirty minutes ago and I'm waiting on our luggage while Paul goes to get our rental car. It was nearly impossible to get something because of the holiday."

"Stella has to go to the doctor in a while to get a cast put on her arm, but I can send her with Stephanie's friend Katie and meet you at the hospital. Have you talked to Frank? I'm not sure when he's supposed to get in."

"I haven't spoken to Frank since our divorce was finalized," Helen said, something between defiance and embarrassment coming through in her voice. "I didn't know he was coming. Is he bringing that _child_ he calls a girlfriend?"

"I think so. Valerie said _they_ in her message about him driving up from Florida," I told her, hoping that I wasn't going to be responsible for keeping them separated. I had enough on my plate.

Helen made a disgusted noise. "I'll just have to tolerate it. We're there for Stephanie. Any updates on her condition?"

"Katie texted earlier to say she is stable, but still considered critical. They aren't going to lift her critical status until they take her out of the coma."

"Okay. Well, you have my number. Call me if something changes. I've told Paul I want to go straight to the hospital. I'll let you know when we're close. Paul said the GPS showed the drive was a little over two hours. We've managed to get a hotel room not far from there. I told the hotel clerk what was happening and they gave us a discount on a premium room that had opened up."

We disconnected and I sat on the sofa with Stella while she told me about all of the dogs on Paw Patrol. I did my best to keep up between her mispronunciations and rambling. She had climbed up in my lap with a book that showed each dog and what their job was. She told me her favorite was one named Chase, who was a police dog, and that Stephanie's favorite was a girl dog name Skye, who flew around in a helicopter. Katie picked Stella up at twelve forty-five to go to the doctor. She'd had a tantrum when Katie said they had to go to the doctor, but Katie had been unfazed as she wrangled Stella into her coat, put a hat on her head, and carried her out to the car while she cried.

My mother was in the dining room making what looked like a grocery list.

"I was thinking of a grocery run, but I wasn't sure if you were going to need the car," she said.

I tossed her the key. "Go ahead. Stephanie's mother won't be here for another couple of hours. I'm going to take a shower and catch up on work until I hear from her."

I grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and drank part of it while my mother continued to add to her list. Her hair had only started to gray in the last few years, and there was surprisingly little considering what Silvia and I had put her through over the years. She had changed clothes at some point since we had gotten to Stephanie's and had put on make-up and done her hair. She was unflappable when it came to a crisis, but she refused to let strangers see her without make-up. The fact that she hadn't been touching up her lipstick and mascara in the car before we met Katie had been almost unheard of.

I watched as my mother drove away towards a nearby grocery and took in the neighborhood a few minutes later. It wasn't much different from what I had seen on Google Earth. I needed to face the reality that I likely wasn't going to be leaving this neighborhood anytime soon. Like Katie had said the day before, Stephanie was facing a long recovery and it would likely be months before she was home. I would call Tank after my shower. We needed to do some restructuring at Rangeman.

* * *

 _ **A/N: The bad grammar and missing words in Stella's lines are not oversights, but intentional as to convey how a 3-year-old might speak.**_


	3. Chapter 3

_Hello, it's me_

 _I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet_

 _To go over everything_

 _They say that time's supposed to heal ya_

 _But I ain't done much healing_

~Adele, _Hello_

* * *

"Talk to her when you go in there," Katie said to me as we walked down the hall towards the intensive care unit at Lutheran Hospital that afternoon. "Be positive. People who have been in comas have often reported being able to hear people talking while they were unconscious."

I nodded to show that I had heard her. I kept trying to remind myself that Stephanie was going to be hooked up to machines, unconscious, looking like she had been through hell, but every time I tried to imagine her, it had been much less grim.

"The orthopedic surgeon is here today. I didn't get to talk to him yesterday, so I'm going to follow up. I'll be in after I'm done," Katie said as she headed towards the nurses station. "She's in room 6108."

I continued down the corridor, passing rooms with sliding glass doors. Some rooms had curtains pulled around the beds for privacy while others were visible to anyone walking past. Several people were on ventilators, nearly all were asleep or unconscious. The nurses station was positioned in the center of the unit with nurses sitting in front of computers at every angle. Stephanie's room was at the back of the unit. A large African-American woman who resembled Lula so much she could have been a sister was sitting at a computer directly across from Stephanie's room. She looked up as I stopped.

"Can I help you?" she demanded. There was no question about it. I was to report on my activities.

"I'm here to see Stephanie Plum," I said, indicating her room. "How is she doing?"

"And who are you?" the woman asked with such attitude that I would have laughed had it not been such a serious situation.

"Carlos Manoso," I replied. "Her power-of-attorney, Katherine Johnson, said I'm on the release of information so that I can get updates on her status."

The woman typed something on the computer and read for a minute. "Thank you," she said, the attitude softening slightly. "I'm Charlene, her nurse. She has been doing well. Her vitals have been stable and she hasn't shown any sign of infection. How do you know her?"

"We were in a relationship a few years ago. And we have a daughter together."

"I heard her little girl was with her in the accident. How is she?"

"Fine. A broken arm and a mild concussion, though you'd never know it by the way she runs around," I said. I hadn't had the nerve to look over at Stephanie yet. I could see her bed in my peripheral vision, but couldn't make out details. I reached into my pocket and checked my phone, but there were no messages to check.

Charlene gave me a rueful smile. "You're stalling."

Nurses didn't pull punches, especially the ones in the more critical areas of the field. Charlene clearly took no one's shit, but also seemed like someone who had held devastated family members like they were her own children.

"Yeah, I am."

Charlene walked around the counter and came towards me. She put an arm on my back and guided me towards the door. "Go talk to her. Tell her you're here, that her baby is fine, and that she will get through this." She pulled the door open and stood aside as I was forced to look at Stephanie for the first time.

It didn't seem like so many tubes should be able to fit in her body. The tube in her mouth was breathing for her; IVs in both arms lead to multiple bags that hung from metal rods on poles and a catheter bag collected urine at the foot of the bed. A heart monitor beeped and the ventilator _whooshed_ every few seconds. There was a large white bandage on the right side of her head and her brown curls were contained in a braid that someone had laid on her right shoulder. Her eyes were closed, both swollen and bruised, as was most of her face. She was almost unrecognizable.

"The swelling and bruising will go down," Charlene said quietly. "She had some minor fractures in her nose and cheekbones, but nothing that won't heal on its own. Go on."

I hadn't realized I was still standing in the hallway, but did as I was told and walked into the room. Charlene quietly shut the door behind me. It felt like everything inside me had tensed up as I crossed the threshold, and I could barely breathe. My body felt heavy, and I wasn't sure if I was moving as slowly as it seemed to me. I finally reached the right side of her bed and looked down at her. She was slightly heavier than when I'd seen the last time, though not by much. Maybe fifteen pounds, probably weight she hadn't lost after pregnancy. I tried to imagine what she had looked like pregnant. I vaguely wondered if there were pictures. Anything that could distract me from what she looked like currently. Her hands rested on either side of her body, both bruised and scraped. I wanted to hold her hand, but didn't want to cause her any pain. I had to remind myself that she had undergone extensive surgeries yesterday for various broken bones, damage to internal organs, and a head injury, and that she was deeply unconscious. It was unlikely she would feel my touch, let alone be hurt by it. I took her hand in mine and held it. She felt slightly cold. Not like she was dead, but like she had been outside on a crisp fall day without gloves. I rubbed my thumb along the back of her hand, trying to find my voice.

"Hey," I said, emotion straining to come out of me in enormous gasps. I cleared my throat before I continued. "I'm here to take care of Stella. Katie called me, like you'd ask her to if something like this happened. Stella's fine. She misses you, but she's healthy and safe. My mother is with her right now. Katie and I came to see you before your parents get here, which should be anytime. They got divorced. I doubt you know that."

I waited, as though Stephanie were going to suddenly open her eyes at the shocking news, but nothing happened. I knew my private time with her was short and I didn't want to talk to her in front of anyone else.

"You are strong, Stephanie. You're brave and you're resilient. Not to mention stubborn as hell. You will get through this. I don't want you to worry about Stella; I'm not going anywhere. I'm here as long as you two need me. You need to save your energy for getting stronger. She needs you, babe. So do I." My vision started to blur slightly and I took a deep breath. "I love you. I never stopped."

I held onto her hand for another minute while I watched her, willing her to get better. Wishing I could take her place. I heard the door slide open behind me and turned to see Katie standing in the doorway.

"Her parents are here," she said quietly.

I gave Stephanie's hand a gentle squeeze and followed Katie back down the hall towards the waiting room.

I could hear Frank and Helen Plum before I could see them. They were attempting to have a restrained argument, but I could tell they were on the verge of raising their voices. When we got into the room, I barely recognized Stephanie's parents from the last time I'd seen either of them. Frank had lost about forty pounds and was very tan. He was dressed in trousers and a white button-up shirt that looked slightly crumpled. He wore glasses that looked good on him, and even with his youngest daughter lying comatose down the hall and his ex-wife five feet away he managed to look happier than I'd ever seen him. I assumed the woman standing next to him was the girlfriend, Cynthia. She was probably in her mid-forties, thin, with hair bleached blonde by the sun and tanned skin. She was decent in the looks department – not at all ugly, but not what men her own age or younger would consider especially attractive. Helen had also lost weight and was dressed like someone who had only packed a wardrobe for a warmer climate. She had on cropped white pants, blue boat shoes, and a matching short-sleeved shirt. She was also very tan and her hair looked like it had been colored to hide the gray. I recognized the man standing next to her, though I hadn't realized the connection when Tank had told his name on the phone the previous day. Paul Giancarlo was a used car salesman in Trenton. I recognized him from his television commercials and billboards. He definitely looked the part of a sleazy salesman– blindingly white teeth, tanned skin, perfectly combed and dyed hair. He was also wearing boat shoes, khaki trousers, and a Hawaiian shirt.

"What's the problem?" I asked, loud enough to get everyone's attention without attracting scolding from the nurses.

"I told him he isn't taking _her_ into see Stephanie," Helen said, jerking her head in Cynthia's direction. "She hasn't ever met Stephanie."

"And I don't care if _he_ has met her," Frank responded, jerking his head in a similar fashion towards Paul. "I don't want her taking the guy she left me for into see our daughter."

I didn't even try to hide my surprise. Not only that Helen had left Frank for Paul, but because they were arguing over this petty shit. Helen looked as though she was torn between being indignant and embarrassed, but didn't say anything.

"You two should just go in together," I said, indicating the Plums. "The hospital isn't going to want more people visiting than necessary."

"I'm _not_ going in there with him," Helen said, crossing her arms over her chest. I bit the inside of my cheek in frustration. It was no wonder Stephanie hadn't spoken to these people in five years.

"You two are her parents. We called you so you could be here to be supportive of her and to see Stella," I said, feeling as though I were trying to explain something complicated to a child. "But if you can't be supportive, then you can both go home. You aren't needed for decision-making. Katie is her power-of-attorney."

"But we're her family," Helen said indignantly, looking to Frank to back her up. "It's our decisions that matter."

"Not legally," Katie replied. "If an unmarried person names a power-of-attorney, that person has the decision-marking powers over anyone else. Otherwise, it would be your decision. And I also control if you see her. So if you're going to be pains in my ass, then you can go home without seeing her. You can go see her together, or individually, but you aren't taking your partners with you. She's at increased risk for infection due to being less than twenty-four hours' post-op and because she no longer has a spleen. So what is it going to be?"

I loved nurses, and fought a smile at Katie's no-nonsense approach to the Plums. Helen's head looked like it might explode. Frank's eyebrows had raised, but it seemed like he was impressed by her fortitude. After several heartbeats, Frank headed towards the door.

"Are you coming, Helen?" he asked over his shoulder. "What room?"

"6108," I told him. Helen stood still for another second before following her ex-husband down the hall.

Katie, Paul, Cynthia, and I stood in awkward silence for a minute before Cynthia went over the counter that was along one wall and began preparing herself a cup of coffee. I caught Paul checking out her ass and cleared my throat. He startled and settled into a chair, looking everywhere else but at me or Cynthia's ass. I nodded towards the hallway and Katie followed me out.

"Fuck, are they always like this?" Katie asked, exasperation evident now that she didn't have to face anyone else.

"Somewhat. I haven't seen them in a few years. Helen was always a bit of a nag. Frank was generally pretty stoic and didn't say much. Stephanie would have preferred her Grandma Mazur be here instead of them, but Edna died two years ago."

"Yeah, she knew about that," Katie said. "She would check the Trenton paper once a week to see what was going on back home. She was really upset when she saw that her grandmother had died. She could have made it home for the funeral, but figured there would be too many questions and things she wasn't ready to explain." She gave me a scrutinizing look. "How are you doing? I know it's hard to see her like that."

I shrugged. "Yeah, it is." I knew she wanted more, but I had met her only twelve hours ago. Even though it felt like we'd been fighting in a battle together for days. We lingered in the hall, not speaking, until Helen and Frank reappeared. I could see them walking down the hall together, Helen dabbing at her eyes and Frank's arm around her shoulders. He looked dazed. When they saw Katie and me in the hall, they stepped away from one another and Frank's arm vanished from Helen's shoulders.

"I want to see Stella," Helen said to me once they had reached us. I nodded.

"You can follow us to Stephanie's house," I replied. "My mother is there with her."

No one spoke as we all rode the elevators down to the lobby and walked out to the parking lot. Katie and I climbed into my Cayenne and I waited by the exit to the lot for each couple's car to get in line behind me. When we pulled into Stephanie's driveway ten-minutes later, I parked my car in her garage. Katie had found an extra opener for the garage and had given it to me before we left for the hospital.

Stella and my mother were inside reading a book on the sofa when we walked into the living room. Katie went to the front door and opened it to let Helen, Paul, Frank, and Cynthia inside.

"Your Grandma and Grandpa Plum are here to see you," I told Stella. I wasn't sure how much reference Stephanie had made to them, but Stella's eyes had gone wide at the mention of their names. She climbed off my mother's lap and ran to her room. I assumed she hadn't wanted to see them and was about to follow her when she came running out with a small book in hand. She sat down on the floor and opened it. I could see it was a small photo album and the first picture was of Stephanie and me. She flipped the page over and on the other side was a picture of Katie, followed by a picture of Helen and Frank.

"Grandma and Grandma Plum," she said proudly, pointing to the pictures.

She got up and showed them their picture in her book. "See? Like in my night-night book."

Helen had tears pouring down her cheeks as she bent down to talk to Stella. "You look so much like your mommy," she said, touching Stella's hair. Frank looked speechless, like he still didn't have words after seeing Stephanie in the hospital. He sat down on the loveseat and Cynthia took a seat next to him. Stella eyed both Cynthia and Paul with suspicion.

"This is my friend, Paul," Helen said, touching Paul's arm as she stood up. "He came with me to see you."

Stella flipped through the rest of her book, but didn't find a picture of Paul. "Who are you?" she asked Cynthia.

"I'm your Grandpa's friend, Cynthia," she said brightly. Stella didn't have to look through her book to be sure Cynthia wasn't in there. She walked over to Katie and indicated that she wanted held. Katie picked her up and walked over towards Helen.

"It's okay," Katie said quietly. "They came to visit you. Isn't that nice?"

Stella didn't say anything, but kept eyeing Paul and Cynthia. It seemed as though she didn't trust anyone who wasn't in her little book. Helen and Paul took seats next to my mother on the sofa and I leaned against the wall next to the loveseat. Katie sat with Stella in the recliner.

"How's your arm, sweetheart?" Helen asked Stella. She had chosen purple for the color on her cast.

"It got broke," she said, lifting up the arm with some difficulty. "I got a purple band-aid."

"Cast," Katie corrected her. "And it has to stay on for a few weeks."

Boston the kitten came into the room looking for attention. Stella wiggled out of Katie's lap and struggled to pick up the kitten due to the awkwardness of her left arm.

"See my kitty?" she asked Helen. I remembered Stephanie telling me that her mother was allergic to cats, so it wasn't surprising when Helen backed up slightly as Stella put the cat on her lap.

"Isn't that sweet?" she said through a gritted smile. She seemed to be holding her breath.

Stella took the kitten over to Frank for his inspection. He stroked the cat's back for a minute and stared at Stella but didn't say anything. Cynthia tried to pet the cat, but Stella picked it up and put it back on the floor before she could touch it. The kitten meowed and headed in my direction. It stared up at me and tried to climb my pant leg. I picked it up and put it in the little cat bed in the corner of the room.

Stella eventually got bored and left the room, meaning that all conversation, which had been directed towards her, stopped. No one seemed to know what to say.

"If you don't need me right now, I have some things I need to do," Katie said. "I'll come back over tonight to show you Stella's bedtime routine."

I nodded and she left as quickly as was possible without actually running for the door. Helen had stared down the hall after Stella, who was now talking to herself in her bedroom.

"Why did she do this?" she asked the room. "Why would she keep her from us?"

My mother and I looked at each other, but neither of us spoke. It wasn't clear if Helen's question was meant to be answered.

"I blame you," Helen said, looking at me when no one offered an answer. "You ruined everything, and then she left town and no one knew where she was."

I raised an eyebrow. "How is it my fault when I didn't even know about Stella until twenty-four hours ago?"

"She broke off her engagement to Joseph _two weeks_ before the wedding because of you!" Helen snapped, standing up as she spoke. It was as though some invisible restraints holding her down had been broken. "You convinced her to leave him to be with you, then you didn't want to marry her. You just wanted someone to be in your bed when you had an itch to scratch."

I shook my head. "I never asked Stephanie to leave Morelli. She made that choice on her own. And what happened in our relationship is between us."

"She felt like she had to leave town because she was ashamed of herself for falling for you!" Helen yelled, all attempts at calm gone. "She threw away what could have been a wonderful life with Joseph. She could have had _his_ children and been at home, but instead she ran off with you, then you broke her heart and she ran away from all of us! Now she's in the hospital, we didn't even know she had a child, and she may never be able to take care of herself again." Tears poured down her cheeks once more.

"You stopped speaking to her after she told you she wasn't going to marry Morelli," I replied, my voice slow and calm. "You told her she was a disappointment and asked why you had ended up with her for a daughter. Do you remember saying that to her?"

Helen wiped her cheeks and looked at the floor. "I regret saying that."

"Did you tell her that?"

"I tried! She wouldn't take my calls," Helen said, having the nerve to look affronted.

"Because she was afraid you were just going to lecture her more, and because you had hurt her too much already," I said. "She decided it wasn't worth the pain to keep in contact with you."

"And what about you?" Helen asked indignantly. "She didn't think the pain of being in contact with you was worth even telling you that you had a child!"

"Maybe," I said. "But she had planned to tell me about her after Christmas. Katie told me that this morning. And she had provisions in place in case something happened to her to ensure that I would be told."

"I don't know why she would even bother," Helen said, looking at me as though I were something nasty on the bottom of her shoe. "You don't even take care of the other child you have. You leave her to raise by someone else, right? She lives in a different state. Some father you are."

"That's enough," my mother snapped. "I've sat here quietly and let you tear him down, but I will not sit here and let you criticize the decision he made for his own child that you know nothing about. He made sure she had a father that would love her and take care of her when he couldn't. The only reason he hasn't been here for Stella the past three years has been because _your daughter_ didn't even tell him she existed."

I couldn't remember a time when my mother had defended me to anyone when she disagreed with something I had done. If we were with family, she would take the other person's side, trying to explain to me how they felt as though I were incapable of understanding and that I had been wrong, even if the other person had caused the conflict. If it were a situation involving non-family members, she would simply keep quiet. She couldn't be seen as being against me to outsiders, but she wasn't going to stand up for me if she thought I was in the wrong. When I had called to tell her that Ron was going to adopt Julie, she had been so angry she refused to speak to me for the next six months. But here she was, thirteen years later, defending that decision to someone she had just met.

Helen opened her mouth to speak, but sound of Stella crying startled all of us. None of us had seen her standing in the hallway. She looked terrified. She wasn't used to people yelling.

"I'm sorry, _mija_ ," my mother said, rushing over to scoop Stella up. "Why don't we go to your room and listen to music on my phone. Do you like Gloria Estefan?"

No one spoke again until we heard the door shut to Stella's bedroom. "I'm going to tell you the same thing Katie told you at the hospital," I said to the room. "If you're going to be a pain in the ass, then you won't be allowed to see Stella. I'm not going to let you come in here and scare her. She has been through enough," I said.

Frank stood up so quickly I thought he was going to attack me. "I'm not going to be kept from seeing my granddaughter because you're going to be a bitch, Helen," he said quietly. "You have no room to criticize anyone. I caught you sneaking around with this bozo –," he indicated Paul on the sofa. " –and instead of admitting that you were wrong for having an affair, you acted like I was the bad guy and walked out on a forty-year marriage because you thought I was _boring_. And then you act like I'm the bad guy again when I find someone who makes me happy, just because she's younger than me. You refused to talk to Stephanie after she broke up with the Morelli boy because you thought the Burg was judging us for her decisions. Now she is lying in that hospital, hooked up to machines –," Frank's voice broke slightly and he cleared his throat before continuing. "She needs us. It doesn't matter what she did or didn't do. We can take turns staying at the hospital. Do you want to go up there now, or take over later?"

No one seemed to know how to respond to this Frank. That had been about twelve times more speech than I had ever heard come out of his mouth at one time. I wasn't even sure if Helen had ever heard him speak this much, and with so much conviction.

"You're right," she replied solemnly. She turned to me. "I'm sorry. This isn't the time or place to be having these discussions, and you're right that what happened between you and Stephanie is none of my business. We're all here now, and the best thing we can do is help support her and Stella." I wasn't sure how much she believed what she was saying, but she was certainly saying it because she felt it was necessary. She looked at Frank, though I couldn't read her expression. "I'll take the rest of the day. I know you've been driving for a while. You should get some rest. I'll drop Paul off to check into our hotel and go straight to the hospital."

Paul looked like he wanted to protest, but was shut down with a look from Helen. The four of them filed out and were pulling out of the driveway a minute later. I closed the door behind them and leaned against it. Jesus Christ, those people could drive you to drink.

I walked over to the recliner and sat down, feeling as though I had been dealing with this situation for months rather than a day. I picked up the photo album Stella had left on the table and flipped it open. The picture on the first page had been of Stephanie and me at Connie Rosolli's wedding. I was wearing a suit and Stephanie was in a silver bridesmaid dress. We looked like a happy couple, and we had been happy that night. So happy that we hadn't been able to make it back to my apartment and had pulled into the alley behind the bond's office to have sex. We hadn't used a condom, and it hit me for the first time that Stella had very likely been conceived that night. Stephanie had left two weeks later and had turned up in the emergency room with morning sickness a week after that. The next picture was of Katie, who was sitting on a wooden swing with a baby Stella in her arms. Following that was a picture of Helen and Frank, sitting together on the sofa in their former home. I was surprised to find a picture of my own parents on the next page. It had been taken at their house on Christmas Eve. Stephanie and I had gone there for dinner and my father had caught my mother under the mistletoe. Stephanie had taken the picture after they had parted from their kiss, when they were still holding each other and both were laughing. The next picture of was Valerie, Albert, and their four kids at what looked like one of the kids' birthday party. The last picture in the book was of the cat.

I had vaguely wondered why Stella was so receptive to my mother and me when she had never met us, but now I knew why. She had looked at our pictures every night before she went to sleep. She had called it her _night-night book_. Katie's notes on her nighttime routine had indicated that she read a story, then looked at the _night-night book_ before going to sleep.

There was a quick knock on the door before it opened and Katie came inside. "I saw they're gone," she said. "How did it go?"

"From bad to worse," I replied. I held up the book in my hand. "How long has she been looking at these pictures?"

"Since she was about eighteen months old," Katie said. "She would lay in bed at night and not want to fall asleep, so Steph made her a photo album of the people who love her for her to look at until she got tired. Stella started calling it the night-night book when she was about two and the name stuck. She always looks at it before bed." She plopped down on the sofa and watched me for a minute. "That book pisses you off, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. I'm pissed off. I can't remember the last time I've been this angry. Or scared. And I still love her and miss her in spite of it all," I said, opening the book up to the page with Stephanie and me. "We've always known how screwed up we both are. Clearly things haven't changed."

Katie shrugged. "Love's complicated. That's how I always knew she was still in love you. If she hadn't been, she would have told you about Stella. God knows the financial responsibility was stressful enough. Kids are expensive. Healthcare and daycare and constantly buying clothes and toys because they grow out of things so fast." She sighed heavily.

"I got married a week after I graduated from college. I was twenty-two, and thought it was what was expected of me. I loved my husband. He was a nice guy– an accountant for a tech company, a Republican, a good Catholic. Everything my parents dreamed of for me. And what I thought would make me happy. But there had always been something niggling at the back of my mind, that something was wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on it. It bothered me until I figured it out one day– that I was attracted to women as well as men. I was so relieved to figure it out that I ran home and told Christopher without even considering that he might not feel as good as I did," Katie said with a small laugh. Her expression sobered quickly. "When I told him he looked at me like I was the scum of the earth. Said I was an abomination of God, and that I had better go to confession right away to repent for my sins and to ask God to help me fight these feelings. I told him I didn't regret how I felt. He told me that if I didn't go to confession and repent that he would leave me, that the Church would allow a divorce in this case. I refused, and he left. He divorced me, made sure my name was mud, and I lost nearly all of my friends. The most fucked up thing of all was that I still loved him for a couple of years after that. Even after everything he had said and done, because I hadn't meant that I didn't want to be married to him. I did. I just wanted him to love me for who I was," Katie said quietly. "Stephanie said that no matter what had happened, she knew you had loved her for who she was. You didn't expect her to be anything other than herself. She has been like a sister to me these last four years. We've told each other a lot. I don't judge the two of you for having a complicated relationship, even though I do think Stephanie was in the wrong for keeping Stella from you."

I took a moment to set aside my anger so that I could be grateful that Stephanie had a friend like Katie. I had a feeling Stephanie likely felt the same way about Katie as I did about Tank.

The faint sound of Gloria Estefan came from the direction of Stella's room and my mother appeared in the living room seconds later.

"Are they coming back?" she asked. I shook my head. "Not tonight. Helen and Frank are taking shifts at the hospital." My mother made the sign of the cross and heaved a sigh of relief.

"I know they're scared and probably feeling guilty because of how things had been left in their relationship with her, but her mother is ridiculous. And that boyfriend seems sleazy."

My instinct was to point out her own hypocrisy, but remembering how she had defended me to Helen kept my mouth shut. "He's a used car salesman," I replied. "Sleaze is a job requirement."

Katie spent the rest of the evening showing me Stella's night time routine. Dinner went by fine, but bath time resulted in tears because Stella kept wanting to put her casted arm in the water. Katie had wrapped it in plastic, but it wasn't impenetrable. I had been bathing myself for over three decades and figured it wasn't much different to bathe a smaller person, so I went back to the kitchen to talk to my mother while Katie finished the bath. My mother was rinsing off dishes to put in the dishwasher, so I grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and looked through one of the drawers for an opener.

"I'll take the sofa so you can have Stephanie's bed," I told her. "I'm so tired I'll probably sleep like the dead."

"I forgot to tell you that Katie has a guest room and told me I can sleep there," she said brightly. "That way you don't have to sleep on the sofa. It doesn't seem like it would be very comfortable."

I froze mid-way while opening the beer. "You're going to Katie's house tonight? What if Stella needs something?"

"That's why _you're_ here," my mother said slowly, as if I didn't understand the concept. "You'll be just fine."

I opened the beer and took a large drag from the bottle. "I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not good with emotional stuff. What if she cries?"

My mother dried off her hands and gave me a _don't-be-ridiculous_ look. "You remember being a child. Think about how you felt when you were upset and then treat her how you would want to have been treated if you were in her position. It's called empathy."

I rolled my eyes. "I know what empathy is. I'm even capable of it."

She kissed my cheek before hanging the dish towel on the oven door handle. "You can do this, Carlos."

"I hope so," I replied. I stared into my beer, hoping it would do something more for me. Like teach me how to raise a little girl. "Seeing Stephanie like that was –," I struggled to find the words to express my feelings even more than usual. "What if she doesn't pull through?" I asked, practically whispering the words. "I can't imagine having to raise Stella without her. Temporarily is one thing, but long-term…"

"Don't do this to yourself, Carlos," my mother ordered. "Don't go down that road."

"You don't think I should prepare myself for it?"

"I think it's premature to do so."

We stood side-by-side, leaning against the counter as I finished my beer. I could hear Stella and Katie talking incoherently at the other end of the house.

"Daddy!" I heard Stella yell. It took me a couple of beats to respond.

"Oh, yeah. That's me," I said, finishing the last of my beer. My mother took the bottle and patted me on the back.

"You'll get used to it."

I found Katie standing in Stella's bedroom, directing her to put various toys in their respective places. Stella was dressed in pale blue pajamas with two cartoon girls on the front of the shirt. Once she had put a stuffed giraffe back into a hamper with the other stuffed animals, she climbed into her little bed and reached for the night-night book.

"You need to read her a bedtime story," Katie told me, indicating a book shelf filled with children's books. "After story, she goes through the night-night book and tells everyone goodnight. She'll want you to sit on the floor next to her bed and rub her back until she goes to sleep."

"Shouldn't I watch you do it?" I asked. Katie rolled her eyes, grabbed a book of the shelf, and thrust it into my hands.

"I'm pretty sure you know how to read a book," she replied. "Good night, Stella Bella. See you tomorrow. Be good for Daddy."

I heard Katie walk down the hall and speak to my mother. They were out the door and the house was quiet a minute later.

"Story, please!" Stella commanded eagerly. I sat down on the floor next to her bed and opened the book Katie had handed to me. It was called _Bernard On His Own_. It looked worn, as though it had been read a lot. It turned out to be about a little bear who couldn't listen to his parents and got lost in the forest. He saved himself when he learned how to stand up on his hind legs and growl loudly so his parents could find him. In true children's book fashion, the little bear was praised by his parents for being a brave, disobedient little shit, and was given a meal.

"I like that book," Stella said.

"Yeah? Well, do what he didn't do and listen to your parents," I said. "So you don't get lost in the woods."

Stella opened the photo album and stared down at the picture of Stephanie and me. I saw her bottom lip start to tremble. Oh shit. Please don't cry.

"I want Mommy," she whimpered, tears falling down her cheeks.

"I know," I said. I reached over to wipe away her tears. "But Mommy is trying to get better right now. You want her to get better, don't you?"

Stella nodded.

"Me too. So we have to be brave and even though we miss her, we have to do what we need to do so she doesn't have to worry about us. Okay?"

Stella nodded. She looked back down at the picture and sniffled. "Night-night, Mommy." She kissed Stephanie on the picture and then looked up at me. "Night-night, Daddy," she told me and before I registered what was happening, she pressed her little lips to mine in a kiss. She then moved onto tell each person in the book goodnight and kissed their picture. When she was done, she closed the book, only to open it up again to look at Stephanie. She started crying again. Something about her pain hurt me on a level I didn't completely understand. It felt somehow similar to the way it felt to see Stephanie in pain, yet different. Worse, even.

"It's okay," I said, rubbing her back. "Mommy misses you too."

After a couple of minutes Stella propped the book up alongside the little railing on her bed, keeping it open to the page with Stephanie. She laid her head on her pillow and whimpered a little as she stared at the picture. I turned off the light on her little bedside table and realized a nightlight was projecting stars onto the ceiling. I kept rubbing her back as she quieted down and her eyes slowly closed. She had likely never spent an entire day away from Stephanie in her life, and even though she seemed comfortable with me, it wasn't nearly the same. I stopped rubbing her back after a few minutes, made sure she was going to stay asleep, and got up off the floor.

I quietly closed her door behind me and went back to the living room. I had no idea what to do with myself. It was only eight o'clock, but I wanted nothing more than to go to bed. The three hours of sleep from earlier in the day wasn't cutting it for me now, especially after the emotions of the day. I locked up around the house and got myself ready for bed. I had just closed my eyes when a small _meow_ sounded from the side of the bed. I turned on the lamp to see the kitten trying to climb up the blanket to get on the bed.

"Go back to your bed in the living room," I told it. Being a cat, it ignored me completely and kept meowing and trying to climb the blankets. I sighed and climbed out of bed, picked up the kitten and took it to the living room. I put it in its bed and headed back to Stephanie's room, only to have it running through my legs before I could climb back in bed.

I grabbed the cat, stopped in the living room for its bed, and carried both to the laundry room. There was a cat door that allowed the cat to get in and out to its food and litter box without the need to leave the door open. I noticed the cat flap had a lock that would allow it to stay shut. I put the cat in its bed, shut the door, and flipped the lock on the cat flap. It had everything it needed in there and would give me peace for the night. I could hear it meowing as I headed back to the bedroom. I climbed into bed, trying to ignore the sound of its pathetic pleas, but after ten minutes of non-stop cries, I got out of bed, grabbed the cat and its bed, unlocked the cat door, and took the cat and its bed back to Stephanie's room. I put the bed on the floor next to the dresser. Maybe it would quiet down if it could see me. It probably hadn't spent a night away from Stephanie since it had moved into the house and may have felt just as lost as Stella did. Was it possible to be empathetic with a cat? Or was I starting to lose my mind?

The cat was out of its bed and crying again before I could even pull the covers over my body.

"For fuck's sake," I muttered. I looked around, as though expecting an audience to have appeared. No one would have no know that I let the cat sleep with me tonight. But just for tonight because I was exhausted and it didn't seem to plan on shutting up anytime soon. I picked the cat up and put it on the bed next to me. "Now shut the hell the up," I said. I turned off the light and laid back down. The cat, happy to be on the bed at last, climbed onto my chest and began kneading the blanket and purring. It eventually curled up in a ball and fell asleep. Now I was stuck sleeping on my back with a cat on my chest. I preferred sleeping on my side. I picked the sleeping cat up and placed it gently on the pillow next to me and rolled over. At some point as I started to doze off, I felt it climb over me and curl up next to my chest. Whatever.

The smell of strawberries woke me in the night. I was briefly disoriented in the dark and the unfamiliar room, but realizing the smell was coming from something directly under my nose. It was Stella's hair. She had gotten out of bed and had climbed into bed with me, curled up next to me the way the cat had been earlier. I glanced at the clock on my phone. It was just after one. I considered taking her back to her own bed, but remembered being little myself and wanting to sleep with my parents when I had been scared or sick. They had never let me and had always sent me back to my room. I decided to let her stay and pulled the covers up over her before going back to sleep.

At least that's what I tried to do. I had no idea that sharing a bed with a little kid was so awful. Every time I had just started to go back to sleep, Stella would move around in the bed. I moved to the other side of the bed, but she always gravitated towards me. At one point, she had her feet in my face, so I moved her around so that her feet were facing towards the foot of the bed. I woke up another time to find her lying with half of her body dangling over the edge of the bed. I pulled her back up and towards the middle of the bed. This continued for the rest of the night. When I woke up at seven the next morning feeling like I had a hangover, it was to find her asleep at the foot of the bed, the footboard the only thing that had kept her from rolling off the end. Now I knew why my parents had never let me sleep with them. Because as the adult, you didn't get much sleep. The cat, who had apparently found somewhere to hide from Stella's assault, meowed happily and went down to see her. Stella woke up when the cat stepped on her and was immediately cheerful.

"Hi, Daddy!" she said brightly.

I groaned and threw my arm over my eyes. This routine was going to take a while to get used to.


	4. Chapter 4

_**A/N: What's that? She managed to post a new chapter after four months of nothing? It's a miracle, right?**_

 _The ache for home lives in all of us,_

 _the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned._

 _~Maya Angelou_

The remainder of the weekend passed with a blur of exhaustion, anxiety, and little girl noise. By Sunday, my mother and Katie seemed under the impression that I was qualified to take care of a three-year-old on my own and would look to me expectantly every time Stella had a need, whether it was help in the bathroom, a meal, or a playmate. I knew as much about kids as I knew about quantum physics, but from what I could tell Stella seemed like a fairly well-behaved child for her age, especially given the fact that she missed her mother and had a broken arm. She had tantrums sometimes, but I'd seen my nieces and nephews act worse. She constantly asked when Stephanie was coming home, and would cry when she didn't get the answer she wanted.

Helen and Frank had stopped by daily to see Stella before going up to spend the day at the hospital. Neither of their partners had accompanied them to the house since their initial visit. Stella was cautious when it came to Helen, likely remembering the way she had yelled during that first visit, but talked incessantly to Frank, lapsing into gibberish at times that no one but Katie could decipher. Stephanie's condition was still considered critical, but stable. The swelling on her brain had gone down enough by Sunday morning to start weaning her off the sedation. The hope was that she would be off the sedation and ventilator within seventy-two hours. I had gone up every day to see her, though the shock of her condition never seemed to fade.

"A woman I used to date is a family lawyer," Katie informed me on Sunday evening after I'd put Stella to bed. "I called her and explained the situation. She said she would be happy to help you get your paternity established." Katie handed me a Post-it note with the name _Alison Jackson_ and a phone number. "I told her I'd pass her number along."

"Thanks," I replied, pocketing the paper. "For this and all you've done the last few days."

Katie shrugged. "It's the only thing I can do that helps Stephanie and Stella. You're doing well, and you have your mother here. I won't be around as much this week because I'm back to my normal work schedule, but I'll stop by in the evenings. Or you can text or call if there's a question."

I nodded my head towards the kitchen, where I could hear my mother loading the dishwasher. "I need to make arrangements for her to get back home. She also needs to get back to work, and God only knows what my father has been up to at home without her. I may need to send my housekeeper up there to clean so she doesn't have a stroke when she gets home."

Katie headed home after telling my mother the front door would be unlocked for her whenever she was ready to come over. I went to the kitchen and leaned against the stove while my mother wiped down counters.

"I appreciate your help, Mom," I said as she finished her work. "But I know you need to get home to Dad and get back to work. I can get a flight arranged for you. I just need to know when you want to leave."

"What about your work, Carlos?" she asked. "Anyone can do my job, but not everyone can do yours. You have a company to run."

"I'm working on that," I told her. "Tank is perfectly capable of doing it all, but normally we have a timeframe on how long I'll be out of the office. We don't in this case, and this time I am capable of working remotely. He's flying out with more of my things tomorrow and we're going to take a couple of days to hammer out the details. It'll require delegating some responsibilities, but we can manage."

"Well, there's no rush for me to get home. The office manager has my shifts cover through Wednesday and told me that the sub is willing to work the whole week if necessary." She hesitated before continuing. "And I've been talking to your father about possibly turning in my retirement papers effectively immediately. You have no idea how long Stephanie is going to be recovering from this or what her long-term prospects will be. You'll need more help than you think. You can't just work from Indiana forever. You have meetings you need to attend at your different offices. You'll need someone to take care of Stella whether you take her with you or leave her here."

"You can't retire just to be on-call for me," I told her. "I'll figure it out. I can always hire a nanny. Besides, what will Dad do if you're gone all the time?"

"He would do what he has been doing since I left —walking around the house naked, eating frozen burritos in front of the television, and falling asleep in his recliner."

I had never really had the desire to do any of those things. Even though I lived alone I rarely left my bedroom naked in case Ella were to come in the apartment. But now that I was faced with the prospect of living with a little girl full-time, I had some regret for not exercising that particular freedom more when I'd had the opportunity.

"I appreciate what you've done, but you don't need to retire on my account. We'll be fine, I promise."

I stayed up until nearly three in the morning making various to-do lists for myself, Stella, and Rangeman. I intended to call Alison Jackson first thing in the morning to set up a meeting. I needed to look at hiring a nanny, whether to enroll Stella in preschool, and find out if she had any upcoming appointments. I devoted a sub-section of her list to Stephanie where I made notes to ensure her bills were paid while she was in the hospital. Katie said Stephanie had everything on autopay, so it was simply a matter of making sure money was regularly put into her checking account.

Next on the priority list was delegating duties at Rangeman. I took a full inventory of both my own and Tank's responsibilities within the company to see where we could reorganize. Tank already worked fifty hours a week and I knew he would work as many as necessary, but I didn't want to take advantage of that. This wasn't just going to be a few weeks. We were potentially looking at several months of me living and working most of the time in Indiana. I didn't feel comfortable leaving the state with Stella until the paternity issue was resolved, and even once it was I couldn't be constantly dragging a three-year-old and a nanny up and down the eastern seaboard every time I needed to go to one of my offices nor could I leave her behind all the time. The truth was I needed to ease up on being a control freak and allow my branches a little more autonomy. I had put people into managerial positions that I trusted more than most and had trained personally. They would and did maintain their respective offices to my standards, so I knew that I didn't need to worry about things going downhill should I step back a little. And the reality was that some of these changes were likely going to be permanent. No matter what happened with Stephanie's health, I was the father to a little girl with whom I intended to maintain a healthy, happy relationship. Even if she made a full recovery, I needed a more consistent schedule with fewer professional responsibilities. Anything more serious than that would mean even more permanent changes.

My personal list was much shorter, since I didn't have much of a personal life. It mainly consisted of setting up an office, learning my way around Fort Wayne without the constant need for GPS, and finding a gym. A sane man would have put _go to therapy_ at the top of his list, but I've never claimed to be sane.

I managed a few hours of sleep before Stella was up demanding breakfast and cartoons. I took care of her needs and made myself an egg white omelet while checking out flights for my mother. I couldn't find her a direct flight from Fort Wayne to Newark, but was able to get her on a flight later that day that would take her from Fort Wayne to Detroit then Newark. I appreciated her help and would probably miss it once she was gone, but five whole days with her was more time than I'd spent with her at once since I was in high school.

"I think you're trying to get rid of me," my mother said when I told her about the flight. The snap in her voice made me afraid she might throw her cup of coffee at me.

"I'm trying to get you back to your own life," I replied, hoping that would cover me. I saw her knuckles whiten around the mug.

"I really do appreciate everything you've done," I continued, and I meant it. "But I have to get used to doing this on my own."

The tension in her hands lessened slightly and I swallowed a sigh of relief. "I know," she replied. She took a sip of coffee and glanced over at Stella, who was pretending to feed toast to a doll. "I'll miss her. I've loved spending time with her."

"You're welcome to visit whenever you want," I said, nearly as amazed as my mother at hearing those words come out of my mouth. I had never issued such an invitation for them to come visit me in Trenton.

"Maybe we can sneak away for a few days at Christmas," my mother said after a moment. "Everyone will probably be relieved to have one less house to visit."

My mother set to helping Stella get dressed for the day while I placed a call to Alison Jackson. I was surprised to find her answering her own phone before realizing Katie had given me her cell phone number.

"I have a busy day in court, but I could stop by your place after work to discuss everything and have you sign a few papers," Alison said after I had introduced myself. "I know Stephanie from when Katie and I went out. I liked her and Stella, so I want to do whatever I can to help out. I know a lot of the family court clerks and judges. I'll see if I can pull any heart strings and get this pushed through quickly given the shape Stephanie is in."

We made plans to meet at seven so that I could get Stella's dinner and bath done before she arrived. I asked if it was okay to have Katie there in case there was information I didn't know and she said it was fine with her. I sent Katie a text message to bring her up to speed and she replied half an hour later that she would be there.

I took my mother to lunch before her flight during which time Stella educated us on the various ponies from My Little Pony. I hadn't anticipated Stella getting upset at saying goodbye to mother at the airport and suffered a few pangs of regret for getting rid of her so quickly as I carried her through the airport. Thankfully, she fell asleep in the car on the ride home.

Tank arrived an hour later and we set to unloading the back of his rented SUV. It contained the remainder of my necessary personal items, the supplies for an alarm installation, office equipment, another gun and ammunition, a lockbox, and legal paperwork. We settled at the dining room table and began going through the restructuring ideas we had each come up with in the last couple of days. Given how long we'd known each other, we had similar ideas, but different approaches. Generally speaking, I would normally be the one to prefer a centralized management structure with limited autonomy to the individual branches and Tank would be the one advocating for a more decentralized set-up. Today we were opposites.

"I can't believe you're going to trust Darren with that much power," Tank said as I outlined my idea. "It'll go straight to his head and then I'll be getting all kinds of calls about him. Remember when you were in Nicaragua? I thought I was going to have to kill him before you got back."

"It won't be like that this time because he'll know I'm still in the loop and I won't hesitate to kick his ass if he gets out of hand," I replied. Plus, I had already told him off for the behavior he had demonstrated while I had been offline for an extended period of time and made it perfectly clear that if I ever heard of that issue again, he'd be out of a job. That had been several years ago, and since then Darren had gotten married and became a father to two little girls. He had matured and I didn't anticipate problems.

Stella woke up as we were discussing whether to create another supervisory position at each branch to help with the additional tasks they would take on. Her hair was a mess from her nap, ensuring no one would ever forget that she was the daughter of Stephanie Plum.

"Who are you?" she asked Tank as she crawled into my lap.

"I'm Tank."

"Fish tank?" Stella replied, sounding a little confused.

I tried to hide my smile in her mess of hair. Tank didn't share my amusement.

"No, like an Army tank. You know the big trucks that blow things up?"

"I like fish," Stella replied. She then proceeded to push her lips out in an effort to make a fish face. After a few seconds of doing this she turned around to look at me, shoving her hair out of her eyes. "I want a fish, Daddy."

"You can't have a fish. Your cat would try to eat it."

Her infamous pout instantly appeared. "I want a fish," she whined. I heard Tank snort, but didn't look in his direction.

"Why don't you find Boston and bring him in here to meet Fish Tank," I suggested. "He loves cats. I bet he'll show you pictures of his cats."

The whining stopped, but there was a slight stomp to her footsteps as she went in search of the cat. Once Stella was out of sight, Tank flipped me off.

"Don't encourage that Fish Tank shit."

"She could call you Pierre instead," I offered, knowing well enough that he'd rather have _Fish Tank_ tattooed on his forehead than have anyone call him Pierre.

Stella reappeared a minute later with the kitten in her arms. Whatever hostility Tank may have had about being christened Fish Tank disappeared as soon as he saw Boston. He held the kitten and talked to Stella about him. He pulled out his phone and showed her the pictures of his own cats and the kittens that one of them had just had. Before I knew it, Stella was sitting in Tank's lap holding her sleeping kitten while we resumed discussions of Rangeman. Eventually the cat ran off and Stella commandeered a sheet of paper and a pen and pretended to write notes, offering an occasional "Good job, Daddy" or "That's right, Fish Tank" as we brainstormed. But by the time we got to the part about contract negotiations, Stella had grown bored and left the room.

I got a text message from Katie around four-thirty saying she had spoken to Stephanie's neurologist and she had finally opened her eyes in response to auditory stimulation. I had hoped to make it up to visit later in the day, but between my work with Tank and the meeting with Alison at seven, it wasn't looking like that would be the case. I knew her parents were up there with her, so that gave me some relief that she wouldn't be alone. I thanked Katie for the information and received a reply back that she would be over in about an hour to help with Stella.

Tank and I continued working until the doorbell rang at five-thirty. I let Katie in and introduced her to Tank. I caught him checking out her ass as she bent over to hug Stella.

"You hit that yet?" Tank asked me quietly as Katie took Stella into the kitchen to get her dinner started.

"No. She's Stephanie's friend," I replied.

"Is she single?"

"As far as I know."

Tank nodded and I saw a glint in his eye that I always saw when he was moving in on a woman. "Keep it in your pants until after the attorney leaves," I said. "I need Katie's help."

Stella insisted that I give her a bath, which left Tank to flirt with Katie. We had found a routine that worked for Stella so that she could play in the bath while keeping her cast dry, but it was still a pain in the ass. Once she was clean and dressed, she ran out to the living room to join Katie and Tank on the sofa and told Katie about Tank's cats. I gave her a few minutes to talk, but eventually cut in to ask Katie about Stephanie.

"She is completely off the drugs that were keeping her comatose, but it'll still be a while before she is more alert," Katie replied as Stella crawled into her lap. "They have to keep her mildly sedated because they don't want her to panic and start pulling at the ventilator tube in her mouth. They hadn't seen her open her eyes for more than a few seconds, but when the doctor said her name today she did open them and look in his direction and focused on him for almost a minute. The neurologist said this is a good sign. It isn't like in the movies where people just wake up right away and are perfectly alert. She'll slowly be more alert and awake more often over the next few days. They've started weaning her off the ventilator and are hoping to have her off it completely by Wednesday morning."

"How are her parents doing? They didn't come over today because they wanted to stay at the hospital," I asked.

"They're behaving themselves. I stopped by to talk to them when I was doing my rounds and found them talking like normal human beings. I guess that's progress."

"Good. I'm hoping to go up tomorrow. I'll leave Stella in the waiting room with them so I can go back and see her."

Katie winced. "The hospital implemented a visitor restriction effective today because of the flu being so bad. No one under eighteen is allowed in the hospital unless they are a patient or have special permission."

Great. Hopefully one of them would be willing to stay with Stella long enough for me to go up and see Stephanie. I knew they had first rights as her parents, but I needed to see her awake. I wanted to reassure her that Stella was okay and I wasn't going anywhere.

"I bet Joetta would be willing to keep Stella for a while so you could go up there tomorrow," Katie said. "She's the woman who lives next door. She has kept her a few times when Steph and I have wanted to go out. She's a sweet woman who always has at least one of her own grandchildren at her house. I'm sure she wouldn't mind. She was just asking me yesterday about what was going on because she had seen you and your mother with Stella and no sign of Stephanie."

I was hesitant to just leave Stella with anyone, but then remembered she wasn't just anyone to Stella and Katie. She was a neighbor, a familiar face.

"Would you mind getting in contact with her and asking? Or giving me her number and I'll do it myself?" I asked.

Katie nodded. "I'll run next door to see if she's home and could come over for a few minutes before Alison gets here. Then you could be formally introduced and see if she's free tomorrow."

Katie left for the neighbor's house and Tank let out a slight moan. "That ass…," he said once Katie was out of the house. I cleared my throat and nodded towards Stella.

"What's ass?" Stella asked innocently. I tried not to laugh, but wasn't completely successful.

"It's not a nice word to use," I told her. "Don't say it. Tank shouldn't be saying it either."

"Uh, yeah," Tank hesitantly agreed, giving Stella a guilty look.

Katie reappeared a few minutes later with an older woman in tow. She was taller than Katie with short silver hair and glasses. We introduced ourselves and spoke for a few minutes about Stephanie. She told me she was free all day tomorrow and to just bring Stella over whenever I was ready to go up to the hospital. We exchanged phone numbers and she left as a car pulled up in the driveway.

"There's Alison," Katie said as a curvy African-American woman emerged from the car. I guessed she was in her forties and nearly as tall as me. Katie and Alison greeted with a friendly kiss on the lips and I heard Tank moan behind me.

"There's no reason for you to stay," I told him quietly.

"I told Katie I'd help keep Stella entertained in case she needed to be in there with you and the lawyer," he replied, his attention focused on Katie and Alison in case they ripped their clothes off and started fucking in the entryway. I rolled my eyes and introduced myself to Alison.

"Carlos Manoso," I said as I shook her hand. "Thank you for coming out."

"It's really no problem," she said. Her gaze rested on Tank over my shoulder.

"This is my colleague, Pierre Montgomery," I told her. "He came out to bring the rest of my belongings and to discuss some restructuring of my business since it looks like I'm going to be out here for a while."

Tank shook Alison's hand as well but gave me a deathly glare when he turned his back to her.

"I'm sure this is a chaotic time for you. I just want to help make this whole process as easy as possible," Alison replied. She walked over to the couch. "Hi, Stella. You probably don't remember me, but you've gotten so big since the last time I saw you."

"Hi," Stella said cheerfully. Even if she didn't remember Alison, she trusted her immediately.

Alison and I headed to the dining room to talk while Katie and Tank stayed in the living room with Stella. Alison pulled several papers out of her brief case and reviewed them with me. Standard releases, confidentiality agreements, and reviews of fees, which I signed and gave back to her. She pulled out a legal pad and a pen and started taking notes.

"Even though you don't question that Stella is your child, the court will likely still want a DNA test to confirm," she began. She slid a piece of paper across the table. "This is a list of the approved labs that can process the DNA test. They send a copy of the results to you, me, and the court directly. We can go ahead and get started on this now, since Stephanie gave you power-of-attorney. You should take Katie with you since her name is also on the POA form so she can verify that Stella is indeed who you claim she is. You can choose whichever lab you prefer, but I would recommend Genetique. They're quick and I've never have any problems with them."

"I'll follow your judgment then," I said. She nodded and made a note on her paper.

"The court may appoint a _guardian ad litem_ for Stella," she continued. "The guardian ad litem is Stella's representative in court and will look out for her interest, since we will also be deciding custody. Since Stephanie probably won't be able to be involved, the judge may also consider appointing an attorney for her to represent her interests, if she is unable to hire one herself. I know it sounds complicated, but I don't think it will be."

I certainly hoped she was right. I didn't want any complications to come into play in regards to establishing my rights to Stella.

"I'll need you to fill out this form." Alison slid another paper across the table. "I'll need to run a background check on you to present to the court. Anything I need to know about?"

"I've been arrested a couple of times for carrying concealed, but those were dropped because of my job and I was later granted a conceal carry permit. I was arrested for grand theft auto as a juvenile and spent six months in juvenile detention in Newark. But that's it."

She nodded a made a note. I liked her. She was efficient and direct. Good qualities in my book, though I imagine she could be a bit much for some people.

"Do you have any other children?"

"I have a fifteen-year-old daughter who lives in with Florida with her mother. I terminated my rights to allow her stepfather to adopt her when she was two because I was in the Army at the time and planned to move back to New Jersey after I got out," I said. "But I still pay child support and visit on occasion."

Alison snapped back in her seat. "How did any court order you to continue child support when you voluntarily terminated your rights and she was adopted?"

"No order. I do it because she is my child and I'm going to provide for her, even if I'm not a big part of her life."

Alison gave me an appraising look. "That's good. I can't get a lot of fathers who have their kids every other weekend to pay child support and you do it even without any parental rights."

I finished filling out the background check form and gave it back to Alison. "I take my responsibilities seriously."

"What are your plans for Stella, if Stephanie makes a full recovery? What sort of involvement do you intend to have with her?"

"I don't have an exact plan at this point," I admitted. "Because I have no idea what is going to happen. Ideally, I hope Stephanie will move back to Trenton so I can see Stella frequently. If not, then we'll work something out. But I have every intention of maintaining a relationship with her and for providing for her financially."

Alison got more information about Stella and Stephanie, asked Katie to put her down on a release of information form so she could speak to the doctors about the limitations of Stephanie's involvement in the process, and had me sign a few more forms. She left at eight promising to email me the finalized documents for review before filing them with the courts and that I should receive a phone call from a laboratory within the next couple of days to set up the DNA test. Katie had put Stella in bed, but she was waiting for me to read a story and go through her picture book. I thanked Alison and went to Stella's room while Katie saw Alison out and Tank lounged on the couch, undoubtedly waiting for Katie to come back in so he could suggest going out for a drink.

I read a book called _Love You Forever_ which ended up being a fairly depressing story to read a child and went through the night-night book routine. It was the first night Stella didn't cry looking at Stephanie's picture. I kissed her on the forehead and rubbed her back.

"I love you, Daddy," she said as she closed her eyes.

"I love you too," I replied. And I meant it. It wasn't just a sense of obligation that made me love her, but the connection I'd found with her in the few days since we'd first met. She was funny, sweet, bright, stubborn, and determined. Just like her mother. She fell asleep quickly and I quietly left her room.

Tank and Katie were sitting on the couch talking when I entered the living room. Their body language told me Tank was probably going to get his wish of a sex-filled evening.

"Alison thinks things should go pretty smoothly," Katie said, blushing slightly when she realized I had been in the room watching her and Tank flirt. "I know she'll do everything she can to help out."

"I appreciate you introducing us, and for coming over to help out tonight."

"It's no problem. I do think I'm going to head home if you don't need anything else," she said, standing up and glancing back at Tank. "Do you want to come over for a drink?" she asked him.

Tank was too cool to jump out of his seat with enthusiasm, but I knew better. He was pumped. I had gotten the impression in the last few months that Tank hadn't been getting laid. Women generally found him intimidating and the only ones who had wanted him lately were ones he wouldn't go anywhere near. He also really liked blondes. "Yeah, that sounds good," he said.

"Come over tomorrow around eleven and we'll keep working," I said as he followed Katie outside. "I want to go to the hospital to see Stephanie in the morning."

He gave me a wave without looking back as he closed the door behind him.

* * *

"Why?" Stella posed the question for the fortieth time that morning. I was beginning to develop an eye twitch.

"I've already told you that I'm going to visit Mommy at the hospital, but kids can't come to the hospital right now, so you'll go to Mrs. Scott's house for a little bit. When I'm done, I'll come get you and we'll go home. Fish Tank will be over later."

"Yay! Fish Tank!" she cheered as I pulled her coat over her casted arm.

"Be good for Mrs. Scott," I informed her as we walked next door. Joetta greeted us at the door and told Stella she needed help baking some cookies for her book club that evening. Any tears that had started to form in Stella's eyes disappeared and she took off running to the kitchen without a look in my direction.

Traffic was heavy so it was after nine-thirty before I pulled into the hospital parking lot. I had spoken to Helen earlier in the morning, who had been at the hospital overnight and was planning to leave around ten when Frank was due to arrive. Signs at the entrance to the hospital informed of a visitor ban and along with stating that no one under eighteen was allowed to visit, it also asked visitors who had fevers, coughs, or other signs of illness to refrain from visiting until symptoms disappeared.

Helen was dozing in the ICU waiting room when I arrived. I decided not to wake her and headed back to the unit. A male nurse was in Stephanie's room replacing an IV bag when I walked in.

"Hello," he said cheerfully. "Stephanie, you have a visitor."

I walked over to the bed and noticed Stephanie's eyes flutter. She seemed dazed and unfocused, likely due to the continued sedation that kept her from freaking out over being on the ventilator. I slipped my hand into hers and she turned her gaze over to me.

"Hey," I said. I felt her lightly squeeze my hand. "Stella's okay. I don't want you to worry about her. I'm here and not going anywhere."

I felt her give my hand a light squeeze again and she closed her eyes.

"She isn't staying awake long," the nurse said quietly. "But she is waking up more often this morning than she did yesterday."

I nodded my understanding, not trusting myself to speak at the moment. The look in Stephanie's eyes had been so vulnerable, child-like even. She had looked just like Stella in that moment of consciousness.

"Keep talking to her, even when she's asleep," the nurse recommended. "It helps."

I pulled up a chair and held her hand for a few more minutes after the nurse left.

"Stella has done really well considering she just met me," I told the sleeping Stephanie. "I think you always showing her my picture helped. She took to my mother right away too. My mother offered to retire so she could stay out here with us, but I couldn't take it. I love her, but you can imagine what it would be like spending five consecutive days with your mother."

Stephanie didn't give any indication that she heard me, but I decided to tell her a few more things anyway.

"Your parents have been here for the last few days. They got divorced and both have new partners. They've been behaving for the most part. Your father stood up to your mother. You would have been proud of him had you seen it. I didn't think he could talk that much at one time. Katie has been great. I don't know what I would have done had she not been willing to help. She's even helping me with the legal stuff. She told me about her ex-girlfriend, Alison, who is going to file all of the paperwork so I can get my legal rights to Stella. She's going to file for joint custody so we don't need to worry about any issues while you're recovering."

The only response I got was the _whoosh_ of the ventilator breathing for her and a twitch from Stephanie's hand that I couldn't say for sure was voluntary. I gently squeezed her hand as I stood up.

"I've missed you, babe. Work on getting better." I kissed her on the forehead and left to see if her father had arrived. I found him in the waiting room talking to Helen.

"I didn't want to wake you," I told Helen after settling down with a cup of coffee. "She opened her eyes for a few seconds when I was back there, but she was pretty out of it. The nurse said she has been opening her eyes more often this morning than yesterday."

"That's good news, right?" Helen asked hopefully.

I shrugged. "I would assume so, but I'm not a doctor."

"She opened her eyes a couple of times when I saw her yesterday, usually after I said something," Frank said, taking a swig of what smelled like strong coffee.

Helen looked crestfallen. "She hasn't opened her eyes once when I've been in there. And I've talked to her and everything. Held her hand, kissed her cheek."

Frank and I exchanged the briefest of glances. Of course we had no proof, but it wouldn't surprise either of us if Stephanie would have kept her eyes intentionally closed if she had heard her mother's voice and was conscious enough to give any response. I can't imagine the first person she would want to see after a traumatic car accident and a coma was the mother who had essentially disowned her.

Helen went back to Stephanie's room on her way out and I lingered to talk to Frank for a few minutes.

"How have things been going between the two of you?" I asked him once Helen was out of earshot.

"Better since that first day," he replied. "Sometimes it's almost like things used to be. We used to talk to each other like a normal couple. She didn't used to care so much what people thought. But once the girls were grown, that was all she had to think about. I just got sick of it. Why do you think I did nothing but sit in front of the television all day?" I could see the pangs of regret in his expression as he looked down at his coffee cup. "But Cynthia actually likes to spend time with me. We go out on the boat and she asks my opinion on things other than what I think my kids should do with their lives. We go dancing, play cards, and watch the sunset every night together. She doesn't expect a lot out of me, but appreciates me for who I am."

It was a good thing I was sitting down because I wasn't sure I would have been able to keep standing after that. Frank Plum was a man with actual emotional depth. I wasn't an emotionally demonstrative person, but it was because my emotions ran so deep they cut painfully, so I had to box them in so that I could function. Frank had always demonstrated a level of annoyance and apathy that I had attributed to people who really didn't have much emotional depth. They were the people content with going through the motions. No drive to succeed, just to get by day to day until they died. It turned out I had been wrong about him all along. Probably so had a lot of other people.

I retrieved Stella from the Joetta's house at ten-thirty and got her settled with a snack and cartoons in time for Tank to come back. The satisfied smirk on his face as he walked in the door at eleven told me he had spent the night with Katie.

"You missed out," Tank told me as we got settled at the dining room table. "She knows how to ride a di -,"

"What do you need?" I asked pointedly as Stella came into the room.

"Juice, please."

"I wouldn't have tried," I told Tank after getting Stella settled once more. "She's Stephanie's friend. I couldn't do that to her."

"Trust me, if you had the night I just had, you wouldn't give a damn what Stephanie thought about it," Tank said. I let him have a moment to reminisce before insisting we get back to work.

Our conversation lapsed into deeper discussions about the business and away from Katie's sexual prowess. At one point I mentioned that something may need to be adjusted as time went on and I had a better idea of how available I would be, which made Tank hold up a hand to pause me.

"Why are you talking like this? I thought this stuff was just going to be for a few months until Stephanie is back on her feet?" he asked.

"I don't know what her long-term prognosis is at this point," I informed him. "She may fully recover, but she may also always need care. For now, I'm operating under the assumption that she'll make a full recovery. But even if she does, things have to change. I have a child and I intend to be involved in her life. And if Stephanie refuses to move back to New Jersey, then I'll need to figure out a schedule that allows me either to have time to keep Stella with me or to come out here to see her."

Tank looked at me as though I'd grown two more heads. "You can't be serious. I mean, the kid is cute and all, but can you seriously look me in the eye and tell me you're gonna be acting like her dad? You don't do that with Julie."

"That's different, and you know it," I said quietly. "And yes, I'm serious."

Tank snorted. "I think you feel guilty or whatever that you didn't even know about her. That wasn't your fault. You can do a lot of stuff, but you can't keep up this Mr. Dad routine forever. You'll go nuts, man."

"I didn't ask you here for your opinion on my parenting abilities. I asked you here to figure out how to restructure the company you help me run. If you can't do that, then head back to Trenton and I'll work it out on my own."

Things chilled between us after that, but he didn't make any more comments that veered outside the boundaries of work. Tank was my best friend and I trusted him implicitly, but we had grown apart somewhat in the last few years. I realized as I watched him talk about staffing problems in the Miami office that it had happened after Stephanie left. He had tried to pull me out of my depression in those first few months, but I'd shut him out. Eventually he had given up. And I had only just noticed it. Some friend I was.

We stopped for lunch and resumed discussions while Stella took a nap. By the time she got up, we had figured out the bulk of operational details for the time being with various changes lined up in case Stephanie didn't make a full recovery.

"Thanks for coming out," I told him as he headed out to his rental car. "Are you going to Katie's tonight?"

He seemed uncertain as to whether he wanted to answer my question. "Yeah. We're going to dinner first. Figured it was a little classier to eat food and talk first. We barely got in the door last night before we were taking our clothes off." He smirked. "It's been a while for me, so I'm going to get it while I can."

"Have fun. Don't get her pregnant," I joked.

Tank snorted. "Trust me, I'm wrapping it up. I'm not ready to be some munchkin's bitch, constantly fetching food and drinks. I enjoy my freedom."

I waved as he left and went back inside. Tank hadn't been wrong to doubt my ability to parent Stella. I hadn't given him—or anyone else—reason to believe I was capable of being emotionally invested enough to be an actual parent. But as I'd told my mother, I wasn't a young soldier who knocked up a one-night-stand anymore. I was pushing forty, a successful business owner who had a child with the only woman I had ever really loved as an adult. I had to change my ways. I should have changed them for Stephanie. It was probably too late for that now, but I could change them for Stella. And I would. I already was.

 _ **A/N: So if you know me, you know I won't abandon a story. But sometimes my muse takes a hike. Between the terrible Midwestern winter and a busy work life, I hadn't had much time to write. But the weather has improved and work is less busy, so I hope the next update isn't four months from now.**_ _ **fingers crossed**_ _ **. Thanks for the kind reviews and support.**_


	5. Chapter 5

_**A/N: Yeah, we don't have to discuss how long it took me to get this chapter out.**_

* * *

 _I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart). I am never without it._

~ _e.e. cummings_

* * *

I'm a creature of habit. Normally I wake up every day at five, shower, get dressed, and start my work day. I eat breakfast and lunch at my desk, often even dinner. When Stephanie and I had been together, I'd only eaten lunch at my desk. We had made a habit of eating breakfast and dinner together in the apartment, even though it meant she dragged herself out of bed to eat with me and then went back to sleep when I left to start my day. These days I kept myself busy from the time I woke up until I fell asleep. Stephanie had initially been concerned about my work schedule when we became a couple because she said I worked all the time. The truth was I had worked all the time because I had nothing else in my life. I had changed that for her, but once she had left me I'd gone back to my old ways, working even more than I had before our year together. I had been away from Trenton for four weeks and even though Stella and I had a routine that worked well for her, I was still struggling to find my own footing. I loved Stella and would do anything for her, but I missed my office. I missed going down to the fifth floor each day, riding around Trenton on patrols, and the quiet comfort of my apartment. There was rarely a second of quiet in the house with a three-year-old around.

Thanks to Alison's connections within the courts, we had been able to get an emergency hearing with a judge in the family courts the second Monday in December. She had presented the case to the judge along with the results of the DNA test Stella and I had taken a few days earlier. She stated that all I was seeking at the moment was to establish my parental rights to Stella and that other factors such as child support and custodial terms could be further discussed once Stephanie was in better health. Katie had been called as a character witness to state that Stephanie made it clear that her intentions were to inform me of my child and to work out the best terms possible for her given our circumstances and that I had been doing very well taking care of Stella. Stephanie's doctor had provided a statement regarding her current status and long-term prospects. She had been taken off the ventilator two days after Stella and I had taken our DNA test, but was struggling to speak. Her current ability to communicate was limited to yes/no head shakes and pointing to pictures on a large card. She was currently undergoing extensive speech therapy along with occupational and physical therapy to regain skills. Her left side was showing weakness and she was demonstrating symptoms of depression and anxiety, possibly even PTSD. Her long-term recovery was generally positive, but the full reach of her recovery was unknown and possibly wouldn't be fully realized for a few years.

After taking a brief recess, the judge stated he had spoken to Stephanie's doctor on the phone and would be taking a court-appointed attorney with him along with Alison and a court reporter to interview Stephanie in her hospital room to determine her wishes. I could tell he was suspicious of me since Stephanie had failed to inform me we had a child together, but I didn't argue. The interview with Stephanie had been conducted the next day and through being asked yes/no questions she was able to state that she consented to joint custody, to changing Stella's last name to Manoso, and that I would provide Stephanie with a set amount of money each month for Stella's care. I had every intention of providing more than that, but it had been the amount set by the court. The judged signed the order later that day without the need for us to return to the court house. I had set to work right away getting her birth certificate and social security information updated with the name change so that I could get her signed up for preschool. We had toured three schools in the past week and I had been happiest with the second one, a Montessori school with a day care that was only a few blocks away from the house. Stella would start there in January.

"You don't have to tell everyone your full name," I told Stella after she introduced herself to a group of Amish women shopping at the local grocery store. It had only been a week since I'd officially informed her of her new last name, but she was already using it with everyone she met.

"I like my new name," she replied cheerfully. "Stella Manoso, Stella Manoso." She said her name in a sing-song voice and wiggled in the child seat on the cart. An older woman passing us made approving noises.

"Aren't you adorable?" she said.

"I know," Stella replied, which elicited a laugh from the older woman. I fought back a laugh as well. She had inherited her modesty from me.

The Stella Manoso Song lasted through the rest of the shopping trip and the self-check-out line. I felt a headache coming on by the time I loaded Stella and the groceries into the car. It was two days before Christmas and we had been in the checkout line for what felt like an eternity.

"Can Mommy come home?" Stella asked as we drove through the city. She still asked the question every day.

"Not for a while. And you can't go see her right now because the hospital won't let kids inside yet," I replied, anticipating her follow-up question.

That was entirely true, but the biggest factor of all was Stephanie. She was emotional and often agitated, frustrated that she couldn't make people understand what she wanted to say, that she seemed to have issues remembering things that had happened, and that she had to rely on strangers for everything from toileting to eating to sitting up. I visited her every day and updated her on how Stella was doing. My visits always made her emotional, though I wasn't sure if it was me, talking about Stella, or a combination of the two in addition to everything else. She always tried to talk, but the sounds that came out of her mouth were unintelligible. I constantly reassured her that it would get better and hoped I wasn't wrong. The speech therapist had asked Katie to bring Stephanie's iPad to the hospital so that she could use apps on it to better communicate. Katie had texted me earlier in the day to say Stephanie had used it with her and she had been able to express herself a little more and could spell out words.

Helen and Frank had both needed to go back home for a while and had felt more comfortable doing so once Stephanie had been moved out of ICU. Helen and my parents were all leaving New Jersey the same day to come out to Indiana, but on separate flights. They would end up on the same flight from Detroit to Fort Wayne.

Katie arrived at the house shortly before six, which gave me time to go up to the hospital to visit Stephanie.

"Please be back by seven-thirty. I have a date," Katie said as she helped Stella finish dinner and get ready for her bath. "I've been putting him off for about a month because of Steph, but now that she is on the mend I told him I could go out with him before I leave town for the holiday."

"My parents should be here around seven. My mother just texted to say the plane had landed, so they just have to pick up their luggage and get the rental car. Helen said she was just going to check in at her hotel and she'll be over tomorrow," I said. I told her goodbye and that I would probably see her after she got back from Florida.

Stephanie was now in room 3402, which was in the neurological unit. She would be able to stay there as long as the hospital could justify that level of care. Once insurance—or better yet, the doctors—had decided Stephanie needed to leave the hospital, she would be transferred to a rehabilitation facility. The best scenario would be for her to come back to Trenton for her recovery, but I suspected Stephanie wouldn't agree to it. She had refused to interact with her mother whenever Helen had tried to talk to her.

I found Stephanie sitting up in bed being fed by a nurse when I arrived at the hospital fifteen minutes later. She had been placed on a diet of soft foods for now, but was currently unable to feed herself. Her coordination and unsteadiness only resulted in her dropping the utensils and wearing her food instead of eating it. The nurse was having Stephanie hold the spoon and was helping her guide it to her mouth.

"Hello, Carlos," the nurse said brightly. Her name was Melody and I had placed her in her late twenties. All of the nurses knew me by name. "She's almost done. Just another two bites."

Stephanie looked in my direction as she took another bite. The swelling and bruising on her face had been slowly fading and she looked more like herself every time I saw her. A large cup with a handle and a straw sat on the tray table beside her. A sign had been placed over her bed the day she moved into the room. It was yellow and simply said _Yes/No questions only_. There were far fewer machines helping her now and only two tubes came out of her body, an IV and a catheter.

I didn't speak until after the nurse had left. She had handed Stephanie the iPad before leaving the room.

"Katie told me you've been using that to talk," I said, nodding at the tablet sitting in her lap. "How are you today?"

Stephanie took a minute to process what I'd asked her before turning her attention to the ipad. She seemed to be struggling to focus her gaze on the screen, but eventually moved her right hand shakily towards something on the screen and touched it.

 _I'm angry_. The voice that expressed her feelings was feminine, but robotic.

"Yeah, I get that," I said, taking a seat on the bed next to her. "But you're strong. You'll get through this."

A tear slipped down her cheek. She pressed another button on the screen.

 _Stella._ The voice that said the name was a human voice, clearly one that had been recorded instead of computer generated.

"She's good. She likes her new last name, tells it to everyone she meets. Still has another couple of weeks with the cast, but her arm should be good as new. And she misses you. Are you sure you don't want to Facetime with her?"

Stephanie shook her head and looked for another button. Once she found it, a keyboard popped up. I watched as she slowly typed out something, missing spaces and words and transposing letters. But the point was clear.

 _Want takl notscare her_

"I know," I said, reaching over to hold her hand. "But I think it scares her more not being able to see you. Even just a minute would help her. And I think it would help you too."

She kept shaking her head and didn't stop, seeming to become more agitated with every shake.

"Okay. We won't do it now," I told her. "I'll wait until you're ready. Do you want to see some pictures of her? It's ridiculous how many I have on my phone."

We sat and looked through pictures on my phone until a text message came through from my mother.

 _We just got to Stephanie's. Katie is leaving to get ready for her date._

"My parents are here for Christmas," I told Stephanie. "Your mother is here too."

Stephanie had been happy looking at Stella's pictures, but her expression became stony at the mention of her mother. She glared at me as though I were personally responsible.

"I know. Did she try to apologize when she was here before?" I asked.

Stephanie looked confused at my question so I elaborated. "Did she try to apologize when she visited you in ICU?"

This seemed like new information to Stephanie. She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. She didn't seem to remember her mother being there, which wasn't surprising given what she had just been through.

The doctors had told us that short-term memory loss was a possibility with Stephanie. It may get better as her brain healed, but there was the chance that she would always have some struggles to retain new information. As with many things, the long-term damage done by the accident would be better revealed over time.

"She and your dad came to Fort Wayne as soon as I called them," I told her. "They got divorced two years ago and both of them are in new relationships."

Stephanie let out an audible gasp at the news. She looked down at her iPad and typed.

 _Why_

I was already beginning to regret telling her that they'd divorced because of the look on her face. I didn't have the nerve to tell her that her mother had been sleeping with someone else and walked out on her dad, so I shrugged. "I don't know. Your father said it was nice to be with someone who cared what he thought and wasn't wrapped up in what everyone else around them thought about her. Your mother didn't say much on the matter. She's dating Paul Giancarlo, the used car salesman. And your father is living with a woman named Cynthia down in Florida."

There was a minute of silence while Stephanie processed everything I had just told her, then she started to cry. I put an arm around her and held her while she cried. It didn't seem to matter if you were six or thirty-six, it still hurt when your parents split up. I would have a hard time if my parents got divorced after decades of marriage.

Melody came in while I was trying to get Stephanie settled. Once she had started crying, she didn't seem to be able to stop, only escalate.

"What's wrong, Stephanie?" Melody asked calmly. "Are you in pain?"

"I told her that her parents have gotten divorced and are seeing other people. It upset her more than I thought."

Melody gave me a knowing look and patted Stephanie's arm. "I'm sorry, Stephanie. That's painful. Do you want something to help you relax? I was going to get you cleaned up and ready for bed."

Stephanie continued to sobbed and didn't give an answer. Melody said she would be right back and returned a few minutes later with a computer on a rolling cart. She pulled out a packet, scanned it, scanned Stephanie's hospital band, and then popped a pill out of the packet and into a small plastic cup.

"Take this," Melody told Stephanie, holding the cup up to her mouth. Stephanie allowed the pill to be poured into her mouth and then swallowed it with a drink from the cup on her table next to the bed. "You'll start to feel better soon."

"I'll see you tomorrow," I told Stephanie. I hated to leave her like this, but could tell the nurse wanted to get her work done. She was likely at the end of her shift and ready to go home.

Melody told Stephanie she would be right back and followed me out of the room.

"I'm sorry to upset her," I told her. "I didn't know she would react that way."

Melody shook her head. "She's easily upset, which isn't surprising. We see a lot of TBI patients here and many of them react the same way. It may get better once she can talk more. She has Ativan available for when she gets like that."

I arrived at Stephanie's twenty minutes later to find a blue sedan parked in the driveway. My parents and Stella were sitting in the living room together when I walked into the house. I had assembled Stephanie's artificial Christmas tree a week earlier and Stella had helped decorate it. Katie had helped me by going out to buy things she knew Stella wanted or needed and the wrapped presents had been under the tree for a couple of days. I could tell my parents had added some gifts of their own to the pile.

"Hi, Daddy!" Stella said happily. "We playing with Boston."

My parents and I discussed Stephanie's condition in Spanish while Stella teased the cat with a cat-nipped filled fish hanging from a plastic pole. They informed me that Helen had been friendly enough on the plane from Detroit, but had seemed distracted. My mother said she asked what Paul was doing for the holiday, but Helen had simply said he was spending it with his adult children and hadn't elaborated further.

My mother did the bedtime routine with Stella while I went for a run and my father opened a beer and turned on the last half of a football game. The air was frigid and hurt my lungs as I jogged around the neighborhood. I intended to join a gym after the holiday and currently regretted putting it off. Indiana was colder than New Jersey and running outdoors in late December wasn't the best idea. I ended up cutting my run short and heading back to the house after only twenty minutes.

My parents would be staying until New Year's Day, so they would be taking Stephanie's bed and I would sleeping on the pull-out sofa I had purchased for Stephanie's office after realizing they intended to stay with us for the holiday. I had offered to put them up at a hotel, but my mother had insisted it wasn't necessary, not seeming to catch that I might deem it necessary. But I hadn't had the energy to argue with her and decided to take advantage of having two other adults in the house those nine days. I could accomplish some tasks that were difficult to get done with Stella in tow and that couldn't be done in the evening after Katie got off work. Maybe I could even go to the grocery store by myself. Not only had I failed to appreciate all the effort Ella put into shopping throughout the years she had worked for me, but I had an all new appreciation for parents who shopped with their kids. It was like taking your worst behaved friend out when they were shit-faced. They had no filter, wanted every ridiculous thing there was, cried and got mad over nothing, or sang loudly as you moved as fast as possible to get everything you needed and to get the hell out of there before they made fools of themselves and you. At first I had been amazed Stephanie could manage it without losing her mind, then I remembered the training in humiliation she had received while working as a bounty hunter. I suspected she was immune to embarrassment by the time Stella was old enough to start having tantrums at the store.

My mother came into the bedroom as I was gathering a few days' worth of clothes to take into the office with me so that I didn't need to constantly come in while they were staying.

"Stella's asleep," she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "She seems to be well-adjusted to being with you, even though she misses Stephanie. And she loves being Stella Manoso."

"Yeah, she has been telling everyone she meets. She even turned her name into a song at the grocery store today."

My mother chuckled. "She's precious. How are you doing? I haven't heard from you much since I left."

I shrugged. "I'm fine. It's hard to work with Stella here. She'll start going to preschool two mornings a week after the first of the year and there's a daycare she can go the rest of the week, but I need to find someone who can help out when day care is closed. I know Katie would help out, but she shouldn't always have to take care of Stella whenever I'm not here. It's my responsibility to find someone and pay them to do it."

I wasn't looking at my mother, but could sense the disapproval wafting in my direction.

"What?" I asked without turning around.

"I told you I would help you. Why would you hire a complete stranger to take care of her?"

"Because I need someone who can come in and stay with her easily enough if I had to leave town for a work emergency. You have a job and Dad in Jersey. You can't relocate to Indiana just because of this mess."

" _Mess?"_ my mother asked, her tone reaching a danger point. "Are you referring to your daughter as a mess?"

"No, the mess I'm referring to is the fact that I didn't know about my daughter until a month ago and that I am stuck in Indiana indefinitely because Stephanie's a stubborn jackass."

Neither of us spoke for another minute as I gathered up the last of my things.

"You never did tell me how you're doing," my mother said as I made to leave the room.

"Yes, I did."

"No, you didn't. You told me how work was going and how you need to find a babysitter. You didn't tell me how _you_ are doing. You're taking care of a child by yourself when you aren't even used to caring for one with a partner. You have Stephanie to worry about as well. How are you holding up?"

"I'm fine," I told her. I took my clothes into the office next door and she followed me.

"Don't give me that, Carlos. Have you forgotten that I was with you the day you got the call? Or that I was with you those first few days? I know you still love her. It isn't easy to watch someone you love suffer." She put a hand on my back as I piled clothes on a table in the corner. "Katie told us how hard it has been on Stephanie to find herself unable to talk or do anything for herself."

I didn't want to have this conversation. Acknowledging my own feelings was terrifying at the best of times. To start, I loved Stella more than I knew was possible to love anyone. It wasn't just moral obligation, but love. I wasn't used to the feeling. I loved Julie, but it wasn't the same as I felt about Stella. I had sacrificed more for Stella in the last month than I had for Julie in her entire life, a fact which hadn't escaped Julie when I called to tell her about Stella. She had angrily hung up on me and had refused to take my calls or respond to my texts since.

Then there were my feelings for Stephanie. They had never gone away, and now getting to see her everyday was making me realize just how much I still loved her. It was agonizing to see her suffer because she couldn't do something for herself. I wanted to change places with her. She was a good person who didn't deserve what had happened to her. I was the type of person who deserved to be incapacitated by an injury. I had killed people—had actually murdered a man— but here I was in perfect form. I'd been injured before, but never to the extent of Stephanie's injuries. I had never worried about bouncing back from it.

But what really terrified me was a very small, dark part of me that felt like maybe she did deserve some of this. Not to die, not to be permanently disabled, but to suffer a little because of everything she had put me through. She had broken my heart and then kept me from my child for the first three years of her life. I could never get that time back. But I didn't like that part of myself. I was ashamed of that part. And I would put a bullet in my head before I'd ever acknowledge it out loud.

"It's hard, but she's stubborn. I know she'll fight like hell to get strong again. And I'll make sure she has whatever she needs," I told my mother, hoping it would be enough to get her off my back. "I keep hoping she'll come back to Jersey, but I don't think so. She refuses to have anything to do with her mother. I told her today about her parents being divorced and it upset her."

"That's understandable," my mother said. "Her whole world has been turned upside-down and no matter what her relationship was with them recently that solid rock of what she would expect to know if she turned up at their house is now gone. She's separated from her child, probably conflicted about you being here, and she's unable to take care of herself or even voice her opinion clearly. To learn her parents, the people who made her and raised, are now living separate lives would be overwhelming for anyone, let alone someone who has been through all she has."

I was always amazed by people who could put words to emotions. Thankfully, my mother seemed to understand that she wouldn't be getting anything else out of me and left the office. I shut the door and decided to keep to myself the rest of the evening. I did some work on my computer and made a to-do list of personal tasks I needed to take care of while my parents were in town.

Helen came over on Christmas Eve to visit with Stella while my mother began preparing things for Christmas dinner the next day and my father wandered around Stephanie's house looking for things to fix. My mother had invited Helen to have Christmas dinner with us when they'd been on the plane from Detroit together and she had accepted. Helen had brought Stella's gifts over to the house and let her open them early. Stella was kept occupied playing with a stuffed cat that looked just like Boston while Helen asked for updates on Stephanie.

"She still isn't speaking, but can answer yes/no questions and do a few things with an ipad," I told her as we sat on the sofa together. "But she doesn't remember you being here before. I told her about you and Frank being divorced. She was pretty upset about it."

The Helen Plum who had shown up to Indiana this time was different than she had been at Thanksgiving. Looking back, I should have realized she was in shock when she had arrived immediately after the accident. The strain had clearly caught up to her, along with a lot more guilt for what had gone down between her and Stephanie in the past.

"Did you tell her about my affair?" Helen asked.

I shook my head. "Not my place."

Helen nodded and watched Stella playing for a minute without speaking. "Paul's children hate me. They think I'm just with him for his money. That's why we were in Jamaica for Thanksgiving instead of at dinner with his family. Last year was a disaster and we vowed not to repeat it. We had planned that we were going on vacation for Thanksgiving, Christmas dinner with Valerie and Albert, and then he'd go over alone that evening to visit the children and grandchildren. But after what happened to Stephanie, he decided to spend Christmas with his children. He feels guilty for pushing them away because of me." A tear slid down her cheek. "Am I really that awful? I not only chase my own daughter away, but also other people's children as well?"

I didn't comment because I had nothing good to say on the matter and Helen didn't elaborate further. She stayed a little bit longer before going up to the hospital to see Stephanie.

My father, ever the contractor, stated he was going to the hardware store to buy supplies to fix the door to Stephanie's laundry room, which refused to stay shut and left almost immediately after Helen. My mother came into the living room wearing an apron and wiping her hands on a dish towel.

"I have everything ready that I can get ready for tomorrow," she said. "Will Katie be joining us? I forgot to ask her last night."

"No, she left this morning to go to her parents' house. They live in Sarasota. She'll be back on Saturday."

The rest of the day was spent with my father swearing in the other room, but at the same time refusing my help, my mother cleaning the house because apparently I wasn't doing a good enough job of it, and Stella spent the afternoon cuddled in my lap sleeping. At one point I brushed some hair off her forehead and found it warm to the touch. My mother found a thermometer that measured temperature in the ear and took Stella's temperate while she slept. It read 102.4F.

"It may just be a virus," she told me. "We'll give her some Tylenol and a bath and see if that helps it go down."

Stella didn't want to take her medicine and it took me holding her while my mother poured the red liquid into her mouth. She eventually swallowed it, but only after spitting it out twice all over me. My mother attempted to take Stella to the bathroom, but she only wanted me, clinging to me like I was a life raft. I had been hoping to get up to Stephanie's room before it was too late, but Stella screamed and held on to me when I tried to tell her I was leaving once she has been bathed and put into pajamas.

"She's not feeling well and wants you," my mother said, as if I couldn't have figured it out for myself. "How about I go up to visit Stephanie tonight? I'll explain what's going on, but tell her not to worry. I'm sure she'll be fine."

I sat in the recliner with Stella to watch another football game with my father after my mother left. Stella fell asleep again holding her stuffed cat and the real cat jumped into my lap and curled up next to them. I kept feeling her forehead to see if the fever was gone. She didn't feel warm, but I knew that might change once the medication wore off. I kept almost texting Katie, but would erase it each time before I could send it. My mother was a nurse. She would tell me when or if she thought I should reach out to Katie.

My father was asleep on the couch when my mother arrived home two hours later. She nudged him and told him to go to bed before taking his spot on the sofa.

"How was she?" I asked.

"Upset. Worried about Stella. Probably lonely being at the hospital during the holiday. It didn't seem like things went well with her mother today. She was trying to spell it out on the ipad, but some of it was difficult to understand. But she was able to tell me that Stella tends to be asymptomatic with ear infections and that this is how she normally behaves when she has one. I called Katie after I left the hospital and she said she would call in an antibiotic for her. She gave the 24-hour pharmacy your phone number and they'll text when it's ready to be picked up."

"You managed to get all of that information out of Stephanie?"

"It wasn't easy. It took a lot of interpretation and asking the right questions. That's part of the reason I was up there so long. But I think she was happy to see me. I told her we'll make sure to record Stella opening Christmas gifts so she can see it and that you'll be able to get away tomorrow to see her."

A text came through at ten-thirty that Stella's medication was ready. My mother went to pick it up and we fought a similar battle with trying to get the antibiotic into Stella until she realized she liked the flavor. I tried to put her to bed, but she didn't want me to leave her. After three failed attempts to slip out when I thought she was asleep, I finally just took her into the office with me and let her sleep on the pull-out with me. She often ended up getting into bed with me at night because she would wake up and find me gone. But tonight I couldn't even have space. If she wasn't touching me, she started crying. I eventually just had to hold her and do my best not to roll over on her.

I had anticipated her being up early on Christmas morning, but was surprised when my mother woke us both up at eight to give Stella another dose of antibiotic and to tell her that Santa had visited while she had been asleep. She hurried out of bed and went running into the living room. I accepted a cup of coffee from my mother while I recorded Stella's frenzied present opening on my phone. She would squeal with delight every time she opened something, running over to thank me or my parents whenever she found out who gave it to her. When it came to gifts that had been designated as being from Stephanie or Katie, she would simply yell out her thank you to them and move on to the next present. Christmas hadn't held much meaning for me since I had been a child myself, but Stella's happiness seemed contagious. I was surprised when Stella was done unwrapping her own gifts and picked up a small rectangular box wrapped in silver.

"This is for you," she said proudly as she handed it to me. I saw the tag on the gift said _To: Daddy From: Stella_.

"Open it!" she shrieked before I could even register what was happening.

"Okay, okay," I said, trying to stop the recording on my phone, but my mother simply took it and turned the camera on us.

I unwrapped the paper to find a picture of Stella in a silver five-by-seven frame. It was a professional shot that had been taken on what looked like a wooden walkway over a creek. The leaves in the background told me the picture had been taken in the fall. Stella was in a blue dress, lying on her stomach on the bridge with her feet in the air and her chin propped up on her hands. She was smiling and looking at a spot over the photographer's shoulder. Probably at Stephanie.

"You have it at work," Stella told me, touching the frame. "You like it?"

"I love it," I told her and gave her a kiss and a hug. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she said. She ran over to get her stocking off the wall and dumped it on the floor, cheering every time she found something new.

"Katie said she took that picture on Stella's birthday this year," my mother told me once Stella had finished emptying her stocking and the recording on my phone had been stopped. "Stephanie apparently told her you aren't the type of person who has personal pictures around in your office or apartment, so Katie was determined to rectify that."

I looked down at the frame in my lap. "I like it. She's a good photographer."

Helen arrived at noon just as my mother was pulling the last dish out of the oven. She tried to smile and appear happy for Stella's sake, but I could tell she was miserable. She and my parents made small talk over lunch and Stella was also a useful distraction. Once Stella was down for a nap and my father and I cleaned up dishes, Helen told us what had happened when she went to see Stephanie.

"I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn't even look at me. I tried to say I was sorry, but she didn't even act like she heard me. When I tried to hold her hand she starting screaming until a nurse came rushing in. I explained what was going on, but Stephanie was so upset the nurse told me I should probably leave and try another time. They had to give her something to calm down," she finished, dabbing at her eyes as she spoke. "I know I've made mistakes, but I'm afraid she'll never forgive me."

"Apparently it's all about her and not her injured daughter lying in the hospital on Christmas day," my father muttered quietly to me in Spanish as we washed dishes.

"This is nothing new," I replied. My mother probably couldn't hear us, and even if Helen could she wouldn't be able to understand.

I left at four to go up to the hospital to visit Stephanie. Stella had wanted me to take a small stuffed zebra to give to Stephanie for Christmas. It looked like it had been kicked around the block a few times, but it was one of her favorites. I made sure she wanted Stephanie to keep it because I didn't want to have to deal with her having a tantrum because she changed her mind. She was sure and started telling me I had to take it.

The television was turned on to HGTV when I arrived at Stephanie's room, but she was asleep. I took a seat in the chair next to the bed and watched her sleep. If I hadn't known what she had been through, I might have thought she had just gotten banged up in a minor car accident or maybe a fall down the stairs with a big FTA. Anyone watching her sleep wouldn't know she couldn't talk or walk or sit up on her own right now. All I wanted for Christmas was for Stephanie to get better. I wanted her to be able to tell me I was an asshole or to talk about shopping at the mall. I wanted her to be able to run after Stella and wear high heels in a sexy dress. I wanted her to be able to do all things she could do before a man had a heart attack in his car and crashed into her. I knew I should be grateful that she was alive, and I was, but I wanted more for her. Maybe it was selfish, but I knew it wasn't all just for me. I wanted her to be all of this for Stella too. And Katie. And herself.

Stephanie eventually woke up and saw me sitting in the chair. I got up and went to sit on the edge of her bed. I gave her a kiss on the cheek and wished her a Merry Christmas.

"Stella wanted me to give this to you," I told her, pulling the zebra out of my pocket. Stephanie weakly reached for it and I placed it in her right hand. She held it up to her chest and fought tears. Clearly the animal held as much meaning to her as it did Stella, and for a moment I felt resentment flair up inside me. I didn't know the story behind that zebra because I hadn't been allowed to be here. Stella wasn't a reliable source and right now Stephanie couldn't tell me much. So until she could, I was left in the dark.

It must have shown on my face because Stephanie began mouthing words, the sounds barely a whisper and incoherent. It took several tries for me to figure out what she was trying to say.

"I'm sorry."

I felt guilty for being an asshole on Christmas and squeezed her hand. "I know. Don't worry about it. We'll have plenty of time to talk about things later. Do you want to watch Stella opening her gifts? I recorded it."

Stephanie nodded and we sat together without talking for the next half hour as we watched our daughter enjoy her Christmas.


	6. Chapter 6

_It's not simple to say_

 _That most days I don't recognize me_

 _~She Used To Be Mine, Sara Bareilles_

 _Stephanie's POV_

Ever since I had Stella, I've craved the ability to stay in bed longer. It doesn't feel like I haven't had a restful night of sleep since she was born. If she wasn't awake for feedings or diaper changes, it was teething or a tummy ache. Then potty training, or those two weeks where I stupidly thought she could sleep in underwear and she peed the bed every night. Then it was scary things in the closet or under the bed or a noise outside. Or on the nights where she actually slept all night long, I woke up because I was worried something must be wrong.

I've been almost exclusively confined to my bed for the last six weeks and I can confidently say I now _hate_ being in bed. Well, I'd confidently say it if I could fucking talk. I'm slowly getting better, but it was frustrating the hell out of me. I was able to say more words every day, but getting my brain to tell my mouth what to do is still a lot of work and only about twenty percent successful at this point. The speech therapist tells me not to worry, that I'm making good progress, but has she ever been through this? I have my iPad so I can use an app on there to say things that I can't seem to get my mouth to do, but it's still ridiculous. I can type, but sometimes I misspell things, which really hits my ego because I've always been a good speller.

I was moved out of the hospital and into a rehabilitation center across the street three days ago. I knew of it because of having worked in the hospital. It was supposed to be the best place in the area for anyone recovering from a brain injury. I had never imagined being a patient here. I have a new speech therapist, a new physical therapist, a new occupational therapist, and new nurses. I had been told I would have a room to myself, but when the transfer day arrived I was told that due to some water damage that had closed off three of the rooms I would have to share a room for a few days with a woman who was due to transfer out of the facility.

Her name was Joanne. I had placed her in her mid-fifties with blonde hair and brown eyes. She hadn't seem to notice when I moved in, despite my wave to her as I was wheeled into the room. Her husband was there every day to see her. His name was Tom. According to Tom, Joanne had been water-skiing on Lake Michigan over the Labor Day weekend when something had gone wrong and she flipped on her skis, hitting her head on a jet ski that had been going by in the opposite direction. She had not only hit her head, but had drowned and been resuscitated. The combination of lack of oxygen and the head injury had left her unable to do much of anything. She had been transferred to rehabilitation in the hopes that she would regain some skills, but after nearly four months in rehab, she wasn't much better off than she had been. The doctors believed there wasn't much more to be done, so she was going to move to a nursing facility closer to her home in Marion. She didn't seem to care. I had only been here for three days, but it had already been clear to me that Joanne had given up on life. The nurses and her husband often wondered if she was aware of her surroundings because she generally didn't respond to them when they tried talking to her. But when they were gone, I would hear her crying. I had noticed her watching the television when it was on. And when Ranger had brought Stella in to see me yesterday, I had noticed her watching us. Granted, she would have had to be brain-dead to have not been watching us after the way that visit had gone.

Seeing Ranger carry Stella into my room had caused so many conflicting emotions to erupt in my chest that I knew I wasn't going to be able to tolerate a long visit. I had tried to tell him I wasn't ready to see her yet. I missed her, but I was afraid that not being able to talk much would scare her. Not to mention that my emotions were out of control. It was like being pregnant again, except there was a lot of anger to go along with the weeping. Stella had been so happy to see me, and I had sobbed when she threw herself into my arms. The realization that I could have been killed and never seen her again hadn't hit me so hard until that moment. Once I had calmed down, she started asking me every question under the sun. I would nod or shake my head and say words that managed to escape my mouth, but more often than not I couldn't form an answer, which frustrated Stella. Ranger had pulled a chair over the side of my bed and frequently reminded Stella that I was still getting better and that included being able to talk again. But that wasn't a satisfying answer for a three year-old who had been used to me talking to her from the moment she had formed ears.

Ranger would tell Stella to talk me about things in her life and I would listen as she rambled on about her daddy, the cat, daddy, Katie, and the new preschool that she would start going to on Monday. Oh, and daddy. At her request, Ranger had given her the little backpack we took everywhere with us. It held toys, snacks, and extra clothes in case of accidents. She pulled out the toys she had packed and was telling me about the new ones she had gotten for Christmas. I did my best to focus on what she was saying, but all of the emotions and thoughts I had in my head were distracting. I was sad that I had missed Christmas with her. I was jealous of how much she seemed to love Ranger and how easily he seemed to have slipped into the role of single parent after less than two months. Where the hell had this guy been four years ago?

"When are you coming home, Mommy?"

Stella's question pushed me over the edge and I started crying again. I had no idea when I was coming home and I couldn't make my goddamned mouth work in the right way to tell her. Once she saw me crying, Stella began to cry. Ranger immediately picked her up and comforted her.

"Mommy's just tired. It's a lot hard work to get better again," he'd said to her as she cried into his shoulder.

Watching him comfort her and be everything I'd ever wanted him to be for her set off a rage inside me like I'd never felt. Strength that eluded me whenever I really needed it came surging out of me. I pushed over the hospital tray table with such force it crashed to the ground. I started screaming and hitting the rails on my bed with my good arm. My left arm was trying, but it didn't want to work as well. Which only pissed me off even more.

I hated everything and everyone in that moment. I hated Ranger. I hated him for finally being what I wanted him to be, at least when it came to Stella. I hated the man who had crashed into me while having heart attack instead of pulling over and calling 911. I hated the doctors who had saved my life. I hated the nurses and the therapists who were always telling me how great I was doing and that I would be able to go home as soon as I was strong enough. I hated my mother, not only for essentially disowning me after my engagement to Morelli ended, but for divorcing my father and for being happy with someone else and for showing up in my hospital room after my accident. I hated Katie for calling Ranger, for being my nurse when I showed up in the emergency room four years ago, for convincing me to take the job at the hospital and to stay in Fort Wayne. I hated myself for the decisions I had made over the last few years. I wished I were dead.

It felt as though I'd almost left my body, having no control over what was happening to me while simultaneously knowing that was I terrifying my child. Even Ranger looked a little afraid as he got up out of the chair and backed away. Nurses had come running into the room to calm me down. I saw one nurse say something to Ranger, who was holding a now-screaming Stella with one arm and her backpack with the other. He nodded to the nurse, looked back at me, and left. Now I had scared away the one person in the world who loved me unconditionally- Stella would never want to visit me again. I managed to stop screaming after what felt like forever, but couldn't stop crying. The nurses had attempted to console me and eventually one showed up with a pill and a cup of water. I managed to take the pill, which I knew was a sedative, and cried until I passed out.

It had been dark by the time I woke up again, which in January could be any time between five in the evening to seven in the morning. My throat was sore from the screaming and crying and I felt like I'd run a marathon. I saw Katie sitting in the chair Ranger had vacated earlier reading a book. She was wearing black skinny-legged trousers, a white button-down shirt, black high heels, and her hair was pulled back in a bun. She jokingly called it the _sexy librarian_ look and wore it on days she was going to interact with some of the especially hot doctors at one of the hospitals. She looked up when she saw me move and closed the book she was reading.

"How are you feeling? I heard about the visit."

I closed my eyes and shook my head. I didn't even need words for her to know how I was feeling. Katie understood.

She had been like the sister I wished Valerie had been. She understood me, she called me out on my shit, but also made it clear she had my back no matter what. She had let me move in with her when I had no place to live, had helped me find a job, had held my hand and cracked jokes while I'd been in labor and given birth to Stella. She had taken turns getting up with Stella in the night during those times when I was so exhausted I could barely function. I felt guilty for being so angry at her earlier, even though I hadn't told anyone what I'd been feeling.

"Stella's fine," she told me, knowing that would be my biggest worry. "Carlos got her calmed down and told her that you are just very tired from working hard to get better and that you're sad you can't be home with her, but that you'll feel better the next time."

Why was he so good at this? I had been with Stella everyday of her life and didn't feel like I was very good at the parenting thing. He had been with her practically no time and was being amazing. Katie had told me how well he was doing with her. She had been surprised based on the way I had described him. She told me he had immediately set out to restructure his work life so that he can do everything from here. He was also looking into hiring a nanny to help out when he needed to work or for times when he needed to go to one of the Rangeman offices. She figured he wouldn't know a little girl from a squirrel in the yard, let alone what to do with one. But he had stepped up and was doing everything from meals to bath to bed time and playing. He was being exactly what Stella needed him to be. So why did I resent him for it?

Katie retrieved my iPad and we communicated as best we could about things. She told me about a date she had and I wrote about the drill sergeant who masqueraded as a physical therapist. We turned on the television in time for the newest episode of _Blue Bloods._ We didn't really like the show, but we both held onto long-lived crushes on Donnie Wahlberg from his _New Kids on the Block_ days. Once the show was over, she told me to not be too hard on myself and to get some sleep.

Ranger showed up after I had spent the morning working with the speech therapist. He was alone, which initially made me worried about who had Stella before I remembered it was Saturday and that she would be with Katie.

"How are you today?" he asked.

"B-better," I managed to say. "I'm s-s-sorry."

Ranger shook his head and squeezed my hand. "Don't worry about it. I shouldn't have pushed a visit yet. You kept trying to tell me you weren't ready."

I shook my head and reached for my iPad. After what felt like three lifetimes of typos and backspacing and searching my brains for the words I wanted to use I managed to type out a coherent message.

 _Not your fault. Hard to keep feelings under control. Doctor says will get better._

There was so much that needed to be discussed with Ranger. What had gone down between us at the end of our relationship. Everything that had happened since then. My choices when it came to Stella. Our feelings for each other. I didn't like to think about it, but I still loved him. I didn't want to, but I didn't seem to be able to stop. I knew he couldn't be what I wanted him to be and that it would never work between us. That made being around him so much more painful. But I appreciated everything he had done. The minute Katie had called him he had driven out to Indiana to look out for Stella. He had turned his entire life upside-down without hesitation. His mother had driven out with him on Thanksgiving Day and both parents had been out at Christmas. His mother had even offered to retire in order to help out with Stella. I liked his parents, and—prior to me leaving their son and keeping their granddaughter's existence from them until she was three—they had liked me. I hadn't seen them at Christmas, so I wasn't sure if they still liked me. I couldn't blame them if they didn't.

"I've started looking into nannies," Ranger told me. "But whoever I hire is someone who may need to help you out once you're back home, at least for a while. Not just with taking care of Stella, but cooking, cleaning, whatever you need. Are there any certain qualities or skills you want me to look for?"

I thought about it for a minute and focused on making the words come out of my mouth. "Sexy p-p-ooo-l guy."

That made Ranger grin. "You don't have a pool. And do you really want a sexy pool guy taking care of our daughter? He'd probably be too busy oiling his chest and looking at himself in the mirror and then she would run off to steal cars and get in a gang fight. It's her in DNA- from both of us."

That was certainly the truth.

Managing to say _sexy pool guy_ was the most words I had put together at once since the accident and the effort had been tiring. I typed out my real response on the iPad.

 _Woman. Has raised kids. Knows what to do. Good cook. Not boring. Not afraid of crazy lady._

"That's it?" Ranger asked. "I was thinking more along the lines of CPR-certified, flexible hours, willing to be on-call, able to keep her for a few days at a time if needed. Preferably knows how to use a gun."

I rolled my eyes and typed out a reply. _That stuff too._

Ranger wasn't one for small talk and since I couldn't do a lot of talking and typing out messages took forever we sat in silence until my lunch arrived. The nurse laid out my tray so that I could have easy access to everything. A turkey sandwich, macaroni salad, fruit cocktail, green beans, and tea. I had utensils to use that had a thick black handle and a strap that helped me keep ahold on them. I was getting better at the coordination part and keeping my grip firm. The occupational therapist told me that he wanted me to not need the strap on my hand by next week. I worked slowly at feeding myself the sandwich, feeling self-conscious that Ranger was watching me. I had looked pathetic to him countless times over the years, but knew this had to be worst. I didn't want him to pity me. I didn't want him to see me this way. When I had made my decision to call him after the holidays, I had wanted him to come out to Indiana to see a strong, confident single mother with a great job and her shit together. I had wanted him to see that I was just fine without him, especially since he hadn't bothered to look for me.

That was the most painful part of it all. He hadn't had the first clue about where I was, what I was doing, or the fact that we had a child together. Because he hadn't cared to look for me. Yes, I had told him to stay away, but when had he ever listened? Ranger did what he wanted, and what he hadn't wanted over the last four years was to figure out what happened to me. If it hadn't been for Stella, I doubt he would have come out when Katie called. He would have passed along my parents' contact information and left it at that. Who cares about the bitch who left him, who told him she hated him as she walked out the door? Let her solve her own problems.

It took me half an hour to eat my lunch. When I finished, I leaned back and closed my eyes. Why was everything so fucking exhausting?

"I'll let you get some rest," Ranger said, standing up. He had watched me eat my entire meal in silence. It was really too bad the accident hadn't given me ESP. I'd kill to know what he was thinking. Or maybe I didn't want to know. Maybe the things he thought about me were ever worse than what I thought about myself. "Do you need anything?"

I shook my head and waved goodbye as he walked out the door. He looked no different than when I'd left him four years ago. He didn't look any older. He hadn't gained or lost weight. He hadn't changed his hair style or grown a beard or started wearing different clothes. His life had probably not changed much at all when I'd left, except that there wasn't someone in his bed every night when he felt like sex. He hadn't mentioned a girlfriend and Katie hadn't seem to think he was involved with anyone. He had likely learned his lesson with me and vowed to never make that mistake again.

I heaved a sigh as I closed my eyes again. I needed to get better so he could go back home. Not that he would be out of my life entirely, but at least I wouldn't have to see him every day.


End file.
